Jackfruit burgers?

The NPR Goats and Soda blog has a piece on jackfruit as a trending meat substitute, with a recipe for baking it in barbecue sauce, using TJ’s canned green jackfruit. For some reason, I can’t seem to link to it with the tablet I’m using.

I have had jackfruit dishes in restaurants, and actually really liked the Uptons naturals bbq jackfruit. The jackfruit is really not a specific flavor itself, so if you like the sauce then you will like it.
I think this is the article you are referring to:
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/09/03/547337695/whatever-happened-to-the-plan-to-make-jackfruit-more-popular

I don’t know about burgers, but jackfruit as vegan “pulled pork” is pretty popular and can be quite tasty.

I’ve never made itself, but I’m tempted to try smoking it like a pork butt.

A helpful clerk at my local Asian market told me that it’s only the unripe jackfruit that is used as a meat substitute.

The ripe fruit is lightly sweet and tastes of pineapple and strawberries.

I have three growing in pots, sprouted from seeds plucked from the last piece we bought.

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Are you asking if anyone’s made jackfruit burgers?

Jackfruit is used a lot in Indian and SE Asian cooking. I love the stuff, but I’ve never had it prepared as a meat substitute.

This showed up in my inbox today. Jackfruit is grown commercially here in Florida on a small scale.

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Those recipes are “mind blowing” in the sense of a .45 to the head.

As in if I had to eat those, I would wanna shoot myself.

Gotta say why are all these vegans always looking for the next meat substitute?

I’ve tried all the various “substitutes” from time to time and they all fall short, and are mostly disgusting on a bun. Why people try to make “burgers” out of things that are nothing like is just crazy.

Black bean, portabella, soyburgers, veg patties ? Why do people keep trying to make sandwiches out of this stuff, when it tastes awful and there are other perfectly delicious recipes you can make with vegetables?

Greek, Lebanese, Turkey, Italy, France, China, Indonesia and Japan all have 100% vegetarian cuisines and dishes that are absolutely delicious and do not feature burgers.

If you want a sandwich have a falafel. Or an eggplant parmesan.

Even in Schwaben 100 years ago meat was a 1-2 times a week kind of thing. Linsen & Spätzle is perhaps the Schwäbisches Nationalgericht, and is delishus as are Käsespätzle (not vegan, but lacto-ovo and also delishus). Zwiebelkuchen is another. So good.

Why do we, as Americans, feel the cultural imperative to make “burgers” out of everything?

Ripe jackfruit is perfectly delicious and I do not understand why you wouldn’t eat it this way.

To say that unripe jackfruit tastes like pulled pork in tacos is ridiculous. It doesn’t.

By the way Agedashi tofu and Ma-Po dofu are also delishus. I will drive out of my way for either of these dishes properly made.

Tofurkey, on the other hand, is disgusting.

And don’t even get me started on soy-sages.

Just saying.

Yes, yes, yes!

Delishus.

If you’re going to dump sauce all over something so that you can’t taste it, might as well use a vegan product :slight_smile: there is good pulled pork out there, but The “pulled pork” served in cafeterias and as sliders at breweries is flavorless meat with a sweet sauce. One place in San Francisco had mediocre pulled pork, and I preferred their pulled jackfruit – – at least it picked up smoke flavor!

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I eat black bean, and veggie patties because I like them – yes, I give someone money and and enjoy them. Same with the MorningStar Farms “Chick’n” patties – I like them and keep them in the freezer for lunches.

I will almost always choose a grilled portabello on a bun because I like them that much better than even a really good hamburger. One of the casual chains – TGI Fridays, Applebees, or similar, they all run together – used to make a veggie pattie served IN a grilled portabello, served with burger fixings. It was my go-to, and I loved it.

You have to manage the expectations, though – if you go into it expecting it to taste like a ground beef burger, I promise you’re going to come away disappointed and p.o.'d, because it won’t, and wasn’t supposed to – but if you choose it as something that tastes good, you’ll win.

I think it’s more that we have to call it a burger – instead of just a tasty sandwich. It simply doesn’t register on my scale of things to spend any time worrying or getting upset about.

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I like them without the bun, they are delicious. Great on an antipasto.

But I don’t see the point of putting lettuce tomato onion and mustard with a grilled portobello on a bun and calling this a "burger.

The other things detract from the flavor of a truly delicious mushroom.

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I believe the appropriate way to sauce pulled pork is an Eastern Carolina whole hog thin sauce with cider vinegar, mustard, brown sugar and red pepper flakes.

Done the right way this sauce is a compliment to the delicious flavors of a pit smoked hog or shoulder and does not over power in any way.

Using this sauce on a vegan product would probably not be a good idea as it is thin and won’t disguise the base ingredient.

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I like them.

Ymmv

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A lot of people transitioning to a vegetarian lifestyle or reducing meat in their diet for health reasons look for familiar dishes.
I eat faux meat once in a while, in recent years there have been some great new brands and products- and people like what is familiar so if you compare it to a burger it’s less intimidating somehow. Regardless of the fact it’s nothing like a burger.

And yes, tofurky is nasty stuff. (But trader joe’s soyrizo is awesome)

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Yes but if you are trying a new diet why don’t you try to find new things that are good to eat, rather than substitutes that are not good?

Seems to me that if you find things you like to eat you are more likely to stick with the new diet.

You know another thing that scares me with all these “substitutes” is all the applied chemistry that goes into producing them.

That can’t be healthy.

And don’t even get me started on the use of “organic” or “natural” on labels.

Wait.

Green jackfruit isn’t chemistry. It’s green jackfruit, and could be organic depending on where you get it.

Tofu. Not chemistry. And again could be organic.

(I’ll agree with the disdain for “all natural”. There are plenty of all natural mushrooms in the wild that will kill you.)

You have obviously not had to eliminate anything from your diet…lucky you. When this is a necessity, yes, it’s nice to find foods that can at least do a pinch hit for the favorites you can no longer eat. And of course we dont eat bad versions…give us a little credit.

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My response was directed to the “great new brands and products.”

Not Jackfruit.

Sorry but i can’t let this go yet.
If you look at Field roast and Beyond Meat these are a few of the new companies making faux meats from ingredients you can pronounce. There are certainly science project versions out there, but now there are additional options that are not. And quite honestly i would rather eat a science project than an animal any day. But my first choice would certainly be a whole plant food option like lentils or soybeans or some of the tasty ethnic dishes you have already mentioned.

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Green jackfruit makes for a great salad.

Photo credit and recipe:

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