On The Verge of Tears

I came across this food while browsing some vegan sites.  I found it on ChowVegan.com and you can look at the original inspirations here

http://chowvegan.com/2008/05/28/bbq-pulled-jackfruit-sandwich/

After seeing how delicious this vegan sandwich looked, I had to track this down and try it out.  First of all, “young, ripe jackfruit” isn’t nearly as easy to locate in South Jersey as ChowVegan implies.  I stopped in several Asian stores to try to locate a can or two before resorting to the be-all-and-end-all of Asian Supermarkets, Hanahreum.  Otherwise known as “H-Mart,” this chain truly is the real deal.  They have everything Asian you could possibly think of and a ton of things you never knew, nor wanted to know, exists.

Sometimes it’s difficult to navigate the foodstuff they offer because many of the labels are in Japanese only.  Nevertheless, I was pretty sure I could find a can of jackfruit there but my hunt, at first was unsuccesful.  Persistance paid off when I eventually did find “green” jackfruit in brine and tried it out.  It was delicious but then, for months, I couldn’t find the “green” jackfruit at H-Mart any longer.  Recently, Monika, Sam and I went back to H-Mart to stock up on Asian groceries (Sam wanted a cache for Ohio).  I found that they had some available, so I stocked up.

I changed the recipe a little, but nonetheless, this is a ridiculously simple recipe to follow.  You’ll need the following items.

1 Crock Pot

2 Martinis (Consume during the duration of CrockPotting, to taste)

4 – 16  oz. cans of “Young” or “Green” Jackfruit.

Some minced garlic

1 cup of White Wine

A bunch of BBQ Sauce

Open the cans of jackfruit and rinse them with cold water to get rid of the brine.

Here’s what the jackfruit looks like.  It’s kind of like the consistency of Pineapple, but not sweet, and very meaty and not juicy.

I used my potato masher to break up the Jackfruit.  It pretty much falls apart and doesn’t require too much effort.  The original ChowVegan recipe says to fry them up a bit but I didn’t feel it was necessary at all.

Add the garlic, wine and BBQ Sauce.  Stir.  Turn on Crock Pot for a few hours until it looks awesome, like this:

Cook it for a little while, maybe a total of 4 hours, and shut off the pot.  Let it cool.  Toast up some whole-grain hamburger buns, or even a torpedo roll.  If you want to make a kind of BBQ cheesesteak, you can add cheese, vegan or otherwise.

This recipe makes a bunch of jackfruit so if you want to just give it a try, halve the recipe.  We love it and it keeps well in the fridge so you can use it for a few weeks.  We use it as a topping on veggie burgers or as a substitute for bacon in a BLT on Rye, too.

–~r

This entry was posted on February 15, 2010 at 6:20 PM and is filed under Recipes, Vegan and Vegetarian Lifestyle with tags H-Mart, jackfruit, vegan recipe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.