I’m guessing that what I had for lunch today, no one who reads this has ever eaten before—prepared in any fashion—breadfruit, or ulu as it’s called here in Hawaii. It’s the next super fruit you will be reading about but won’t be able to try unless someone figures out the processing and distribution pieces. In its riper state, breadfruit is sometimes used as a potato substitute, partly because potatoes don’t grow super well here. But my favorite preparation is as a bread substitute, especially as a pancake that requires no other ingredients. We grow breadfruit in our yard in Kauai, and it’s in peak season right now.
You can google all about breadfruit and its great nutrition profile (it provides nearly everything short of eternal life), but I’ll just share my experience with it. It’s OK to pick the fruit at any stage of ripeness for different uses, flavors and experiences, but we like to wait until it is so ripe that if it fell off the tree, it would break open and splat on the ground. We know the fruit has reached that stage when a swarm of gnats swirls around the fruit. You can’t stand under the branch when you pluck off the fruit, because it secretes a dripping latex-like substance. If you know anything about the more popular jackfruit, you know what I mean about that sticky substance. In fact, breadfruit comes from the same family as jackfruit.
I think I can best illustrate breadfruit in picture. So here we go.
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