# Bread Fruit **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 7, 2007, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694 "2007-08-07T01:51:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sapo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/21 "2007-08-07T23:01:47Z")
[QUOTE=myrnajean] …Do they sell it in cans? [/QUOTE] Ugh, I hope not. (if they do, it is probably in the ethnic food aisle, right next to the canned haggis) ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/22 "2007-08-08T00:30:01Z")
[QUOTE=myrnajean] Boiled and dressed with salt and olive oil along with the other roots and bacalao is how I had it in PR, and I loved it . They don’t sell it in the states very much. I found one, and I guess I prepared it wrong, or perhaps it was spoiled, It tasted really nasty, almost like burnt plastic or something. Do they sell it in cans? [/QUOTE] \*Serenata de viandas con bacalao. \* Mmm…Mmmm…Mmmm… You can also slice the breadfruit thick and make it into _tostones_ But that’s a very real issue with access to breadfruit in the temperate zone, even around here it doesn’t travel/store long-distance/term very well at all. And as **Sapo** mentions, the notion of canned breadfruit elicits the: _“sure you could do it, but… why?”_ reaction. (Now watch some smart-ass Anglo or Floricuban make a fortune on marketing it up…) ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/23 "2007-08-08T03:38:24Z")
Canned breadfruit is indeed available in my local Asian market. Not that I would recommend it. I have sampled the tinned rhambutan and longans and they were not too bad. Sort of the same difference between fresh and tinned peaches. Not truly just like fresh, but yummy still. In Asia people with breadfruit trees in the yard often tie those plastic grocery bags around the fruit as it comes ripe to protect it from animals. It looks quite funny to see. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/24 "2007-08-08T03:54:25Z")
[QUOTE=elbows] It’s what ‘Juicy Fruit’ gum is supposed to taste like. In the same way that Grenadine is supposed to taste like pommagranite. By which I mean it doesn’t taste very much like that. It is often pickled as well! [/QUOTE] I’m pretty sure Juicy Fruit tastes like jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), not breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis). The former is often described as cloyingly sweet, the later mostly tasteless starchiness. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/25 "2007-08-08T07:44:25Z")
I prefer bread[fish](http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/breadfish/). ---
**Author:** ![Sapo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@Sapo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sapo)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/26 "2007-08-08T09:42:03Z")
[QUOTE=JRDelirious] \*Serenata de viandas con bacalao. \* Mmm…Mmmm…Mmmm… You can also slice the breadfruit thick and make it into _tostones_ [/QUOTE] Since this thread seems to be in its CS spiral, care to share some tips for breadfruit tostones? My MIL makes them but they are always mushy, never crunchy. I have never tried to make them myself since I have been so unimpressed by the result, but I am willing to give them a go. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/27 "2007-08-08T18:12:42Z")
IIRC, they had it on one season of Survivor? ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/28 "2007-08-08T23:39:14Z")
Judging from the passages by earlier travellers on the subject that he quotes in his _A Voyage to the South Sea_, the standard comparison in Bligh’s day was that they tasted vaguely like artichokes. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/29 "2007-08-08T23:41:40Z")
I assume they’re talking about jerusalem artichokes, rather than globe? - this comparison would seem more apt to me. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2007, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/30 "2007-08-08T23:46:11Z")
Yep. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/31 "2007-08-09T02:40:51Z")
[QUOTE=Sapo] Since this thread seems to be in its CS spiral, care to share some tips for breadfruit tostones? My MIL makes them but they are always mushy, never crunchy. I have never tried to make them myself since I have been so unimpressed by the result, but I am willing to give them a go. [/QUOTE] I’ll have to get in touch with my mother and get back to you about that (I personally can’t get them right to save my life either)… seems to be that the outside layer fries too quickly, and that “seals in” moisture and absorbed fat so that then once the heat’s off, these re-soften the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/32 "2007-08-09T02:51:15Z")
:smack: Juicy Fruit, you’re exactly right, is supposed to be Jack fruit **NOT** bread fruit. :smack: Also it is Jack Fruit that you sometimes get pickled, or available in my local Asian Market. :smack: Or see covered with bags while still on the tree when in Asia. :smack: So sorry! ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694/33 "2007-08-09T05:46:51Z")
I think they would be great for a clam or lobster bake or kalua from what I’ve heard of them. Or throw them in the dwindling coals of a beach fire at night and eat them for breakfast the next morning. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bread-fruit/414694.md?page=1)