Tristan Kwong's expertise has earned him the title of Fruit Sommelier—and he’s visiting the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen to share some of his rare fruit wisdom. From sweetsops and rambutans to mangosteens, sprouted coconuts and many more, learn how to pick and eat some of the less traditional fruits of the world.Read more: What Are Finger Limes, Anyway?
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00:00 - Hi, I'm Tristan Kwong, professional chef.
00:01 They call me Fruit Sommel in the streets
00:03 'cause my love languages are fruit plates
00:04 and words of affirmation.
00:06 - Bang. - Bang.
00:06 - Today we're in the VA Test Kitchen
00:08 and I'm gonna show you guys how to eat rare fruit.
00:10 Let's get it.
00:15 So here we have sweet sop.
00:16 So the sweet sop is native to the Americas
00:18 and the West Indies.
00:20 They are in a family of fruits
00:21 that are often referenced as sugar apples.
00:23 And while not anywhere close to appley texture,
00:25 this is maybe one of the sweetest fruits
00:27 that I think you can get your hands on.
00:29 This is a different varietal that grows purple.
00:31 And then when they turn ripe,
00:32 you'll see that in between they get almost pinkish brownish.
00:35 The biggest factor beyond all of that
00:36 is that when they become ripe,
00:38 they essentially start to fall apart
00:40 and you can pretty much just pick out
00:41 each one of these pods.
00:43 These are not the edible bits, these are the skin,
00:45 but because they start falling apart,
00:46 you can peel them open like that.
00:48 So you just kind of suck the thing off the seed.
00:51 So it's like a little black seed
00:52 encasing that like white casing of flesh.
00:54 And these guys are kind of expensive,
00:55 but they are one of like my more favorite fruit
00:58 just because they have like such a unique taste and texture.
01:00 When they are ripe,
01:01 they become almost like a banana pudding.
01:03 It's incredibly floral, it's incredibly sweet,
01:05 incredibly soft.
01:07 They literally are just like some of the craziest fruit
01:09 I think you can get.
01:10 So if I had to present it,
01:11 I don't know if I would pull it apart like this
01:13 and eat the seeds as they were.
01:14 I would try to get a knife through it.
01:16 They have this little stemmy bit in here that you can't eat.
01:19 And while the rind is not edible, it is incredibly pretty.
01:22 So if I were to serve,
01:23 they would probably be just like this.
01:25 You can eat them out of the wedge
01:26 and then spit all the seeds out.
01:28 Strange and weird and lovely.
01:30 These are rambutans.
01:32 They are native to Southeast Asia.
01:34 The best way to tell if these are ripe
01:35 is if they are a nice bright color
01:36 and the tendrils aren't all dry and crispy.
01:39 And then ones that have gone too far
01:41 will feel a little bit lighter
01:42 just because the flesh is shrinking away from the shell
01:44 and the tendrils start to turn brown
01:46 and get a little bit crispy
01:47 and are easy to like break off.
01:49 And because they are so wild and crazy looking,
01:53 I like to keep at least half the shell on
01:54 to show you like where it came from
01:56 so it doesn't look just like a tiny hard-boiled egg.
01:58 Just peel the shell off, pop them in your mouth,
02:00 scrape the meat off the seed and then spit the seed out.
02:03 The sugar in them is a little bit more tart
02:04 and a little bit more clean compared to like a longan,
02:07 which is a little nuttier, a little bit muskier.
02:09 The flesh is more gummy bear-like.
02:11 They have a great mouthfeel.
02:13 But they're delicious.
02:14 They are a great conversation piece.
02:17 So these are abu.
02:18 They are native to Central and South America
02:21 and parts of the Amazonian region.
02:23 When they're underripe, they have a lot of latex in them.
02:25 So they're really unpleasant to eat.
02:27 So you can tell that they're ripe
02:28 when they turn mostly yellow.
02:30 A little bit of green isn't too bad,
02:31 but too green is underripe.
02:33 So on the inside, you can see that the flesh
02:35 is like almost translucent and a little bit bouncy.
02:38 This entire pit here is completely inedible.
02:41 The outside rind is a little bit waxy, a little bit bitter.
02:45 Pop the edible bit out, discard the super bitter rind.
02:48 Texture-wise, I would say closest to a kiwi.
02:52 Taste-wise, I would say somewhere
02:53 between an apple and a watermelon.
02:55 (chewing)
02:57 Don't eat the skin.
02:58 (laughs)
02:59 So these are mangosteens.
03:01 They are native to Southeast Asia.
03:02 They are some of my favorite fruit.
03:05 Just because they're so weird,
03:07 they start growing off as green,
03:09 passing through like a red before it gets as dark as this.
03:11 You can tell when they're ripe because they'll get dark,
03:13 like I just said,
03:14 but they also will start to have a little bit of give.
03:16 I'm sure you can just even hear the difference
03:18 in sound of like,
03:19 like this one is taking on a little bit of a dent here,
03:21 but this guy,
03:22 firmer tap.
03:25 Another cool part about mangosteens
03:27 is that they have these little flower on the bottom.
03:28 The petals on the flower will actually tell you
03:30 how many segments are inside the fruit.
03:32 No fruit will really let you know like,
03:33 this is what I look like inside,
03:34 except for really the mangosteen.
03:36 The best way to open them, honestly,
03:38 I think is with your hands.
03:39 You just do a little Hulk smash.
03:40 What you're looking for when you open them up
03:42 is that the flesh is bright white
03:44 and not at all translucent.
03:46 When it starts to go translucent,
03:47 that means they're a little bit overripe.
03:49 And they come out just like this.
03:51 Mm, banging.
03:54 Tastes like a lychee mixed with a little bit more citrus.
03:56 The texture is almost like a velvety grape,
03:58 but in terms of presentation,
04:00 this looks like a jungle man cracked it open.
04:03 Yeah, but if I were to serve them,
04:04 I would slice like this
04:05 and the knife will only go in
04:07 if the fruit is slightly ripe.
04:09 I would not recommend using a chef's knife,
04:11 maybe like a serrated knife
04:12 so you get a little bit more control.
04:14 Beautiful, clean, easy.
04:16 You can even serve them like this
04:17 and have the right people pop it open.
04:20 I'll just pop this whole five-segment bit in my mouth.
04:23 It looks crazy, it tastes crazy, it is crazy.
04:28 10 out of 10 mangosteen.
04:30 So here we have some coconuts.
04:31 They're actually on different spectrums
04:32 of their respective life cycles.
04:34 While this one is smaller, it's actually older.
04:37 This is what happens once the coconut falls out of the tree,
04:41 hangs out in the sand.
04:42 And they're harder to find
04:43 because they take longer to sprout.
04:45 It'll actually take between four to six months
04:46 after the coconut's fallen out of the tree
04:48 for it to become like this.
04:49 I'm using a cleaver here because I'm looking for weight,
04:52 not with your pointy side, but with the back.
04:54 It almost looks like, I hate to say a brain,
04:59 but like almost like a brain.
05:00 But if you were to scoop into this here,
05:02 you'll see that the inside flesh is white.
05:04 This would essentially be the root and nutrient system
05:06 for the rest of the plant as it continued to grow.
05:08 But it's also completely edible.
05:10 It's also like a high source of fiber
05:12 and a lot of different vitamins.
05:14 Cheers.
05:15 That's not my favorite,
05:17 but it's an incredibly strange and fun texture.
05:20 Way better than a sprouted coconut.
05:26 These are Tamarillo.
05:27 They are native to Latin America.
05:29 I actually have never tried one of these before,
05:31 so I'm actually pretty excited to cut into this guy.
05:33 The more red ones are more sour,
05:36 and the more yellow they are, the sweeter they'll be.
05:38 So while Tamarillo or tree tomatoes aren't actual tomatoes,
05:42 you can use the same indicators for ripeness
05:43 to tell whether they're ripe
05:44 as you would for a regular tomato.
05:46 You wanna look for ones that are slightly more firm,
05:48 have a little bit of give, but not too much.
05:50 And really depending on what the use you have for them,
05:53 whether you want them to be sour or sweet,
05:55 look for the difference in color.
05:56 That's crazy.
05:57 It looks exactly like a tomato.
05:58 Does not smell like one though.
06:01 They smell more citrusy, a little bit more sour.
06:03 It's like a really sour tomato.
06:08 That outside rind is also less than edible.
06:11 That's kind of fire though.
06:13 I like that.
06:13 It's like a sour tomato with papaya flavor.
06:16 They're like weirdly savory for how sour they are.
06:19 Woo.
06:21 I think this would be really good in like a salsa actually.
06:23 Like it has like the whole salsa component,
06:25 like the tomatoey plus the sweet plus the sour
06:27 already like built into it.
06:29 Yeah, that's straight up like nothing I've ever had before.
06:32 Here we have cacao pods or cacao fruit.
06:34 They're native to the Amazon rainforest,
06:37 and these are the things you make chocolate out of.
06:38 So ripe cacao pods will have a little hollow sound,
06:41 like you can feel something rattling around inside of it.
06:44 It means that the pods themselves
06:46 have separated from the walls,
06:47 which means that they're ready to be harvested.
06:49 Secondarily, if you scratch the surface,
06:51 under here is a little bit yellow, whitish.
06:54 That means they're good to go.
06:55 When they're green, that means typically
06:56 they're a little bit underripe.
06:58 Because it's ripe, the fruit has come loose.
07:00 The only edible part is this little white membrane
07:02 on the outside of the pod.
07:03 And the way to eat it is to just suck the flesh off the pod.
07:07 If I had to say, it kind of tastes like
07:08 a slightly underripe mango.
07:10 And the flesh itself is really difficult
07:12 to remove from the seed.
07:13 So it's more like a mouth fidget spinner.
07:15 And this is the thing that you would take,
07:18 ferment and crush it.
07:19 It turns into cacao nibs,
07:20 and then they get rolled out and pressed,
07:22 and then they add sugar or milk,
07:24 and they solidify into chocolate.
07:26 So this is a maimi sapote.
07:29 These guys are grown and native to Central America,
07:31 parts of the Caribbean, and Mexico.
07:33 A lot of desserts use this guy as its base,
07:36 but mostly not in its raw form.
07:38 So at the top here,
07:39 these guys are giving a little bit of give, which is nice.
07:42 You obviously don't want them to be mush.
07:44 You do want this little bit of give,
07:45 but down here, it's pretty rock hard.
07:47 I don't know how ripe this guy is,
07:49 maybe about 60% there.
07:51 So I'm gonna cut it the same way you would cut a mango
07:54 or like an avocado.
07:56 The outside is like super unassuming,
07:58 crusty, nasty, craggly, but the inside looks beautiful.
08:02 It's definitely giving sunset.
08:04 The outside skin is inedible,
08:06 and the inside big black pit here is also inedible.
08:10 It's cutting almost like butter.
08:11 Yeah, so it's actually really sweet,
08:16 but it does have the texture of like a boiled potato,
08:19 which is not my favorite.
08:21 Because the texture is a little starchy,
08:23 I don't think big pieces would be a good idea.
08:25 So if I were to serve this on a fruit plate,
08:26 I would probably cut small, nice little chunks here,
08:30 like this.
08:31 This tastes great, 100%.
08:33 I think you turn this into a smoothie or like a cake even,
08:35 like it would be amazing.
08:37 These are finger limes.
08:39 They are native to Australia.
08:40 They're called finger limes
08:41 'cause they're shaped like little fingers.
08:43 Ripe ones like normal limes will have like a nice shiny skin.
08:46 It means that the fruit is still producing oil,
08:48 and you want them to feel firm and not empty.
08:51 Inside of here are little caviar-like pearls
08:54 full of lime juice.
08:55 Chefs like this because it adds acid,
08:57 but in a form rather than just lime
08:59 or lemon juice on a plate.
09:01 Delicious.
09:04 They're great.
09:05 They're super crisp and crunchy.
09:06 Like the pods almost like pop rock in your mouth.
09:09 Citrus-dipping dots almost.
09:11 As is, I don't know if I would ever put these
09:12 on a fruit plate, but I could see you squeezing them out
09:15 and then mixing them with like tajin
09:16 or like a little bit of sugar
09:17 to give yourself like solid limeade.
09:19 Here we have cactus fruit or prickly pear.
09:24 These are native to the Americas.
09:26 These are actually cousins to dragon fruit.
09:28 They'll grow off the cactus like this.
09:30 See these little dots here?
09:32 Spines will usually be growing out of these,
09:33 but for the most part, the spines will come off
09:35 so that nobody hurts themselves at the grocery store.
09:38 So ripe ones will have smooth skin.
09:40 Wrinkles mean that they're overripe.
09:42 They are very juicy.
09:44 The color is kind of crazy.
09:46 They're beautiful.
09:47 I would serve it in wedges like this.
09:50 You could even separate the flesh from the rind
09:52 to make it easier.
09:54 They taste like halfway between like a dragon fruit,
09:56 a pear, and a kiwi all together.
09:58 The seeds aren't super pleasant, but completely edible.
10:01 You know, you don't gotta be a baby about it.
10:04 So these are golden berries.
10:05 They're native to parts of South America.
10:08 They almost have like this little husk on the outside.
10:10 You can tell that they're ripe
10:11 when the husk itself will start to turn
10:13 a little bit translucent,
10:14 and you can see like the gold of the berry right through it.
10:16 Peel the husk off like a tomatillo,
10:18 and you can eat them raw.
10:20 They taste halfway between like a sweet cherry
10:23 and a slightly tart tomato.
10:24 From an anatomy standpoint,
10:25 they're built very much like a tomato.
10:27 It has a little bit of tiny seeds inside.
10:29 They're just slightly more sweet, slightly more tart.
10:31 The fruit itself is honestly so good
10:33 that you really don't have to
10:34 or really don't want to do much to it.
10:36 They are near perfect as they are.
10:38 So up next, we have a pomegranate.
10:41 They're not as rare as they used to be.
10:42 There's one growing behind my house
10:44 on the sidewalk in Queens.
10:46 When they are more ripe, the skin will scratch more easily.
10:48 You can see here, not a lot of effort to peel this guy.
10:50 This one doesn't wanna come up at all.
10:53 So what I like to do is slice the top here.
10:56 And you'll see that like they're kind of separated
10:58 into like these smaller, podular segments,
11:01 but there's like a slightly thicker
11:02 white membrane between them.
11:04 Find that little gap and follow it down.
11:07 Just score the outside, little gap here, pop it open.
11:11 And you remove this like little center bit here.
11:14 And that way, every single kernel you see
11:16 is completely exposed.
11:18 And rather than like taking a spoon
11:20 and hitting the back of it,
11:20 you can literally just take your finger,
11:22 go from underneath.
11:23 When they're riper, they're more sweet and less acidic,
11:27 but they still have this like nice tang.
11:29 There are little seeds inside of here.
11:30 They are completely edible.
11:32 Good fiber.
11:34 I think the best way to serve them
11:35 is to peel back this little white membrane
11:37 and serve them in like big chunks like this.
11:38 They almost look like a geode after you like crack it open.
11:42 Oh, my shirt and my jacket, no.
11:46 I thought I was a professional.
11:48 So these are longan, which is Cantonese for dragon eye.
11:52 Longan originate from Southern China.
11:54 They started out as like little green pods.
11:56 And as they ripen, they'll go through a yellow phase
11:59 into a light brown phase like this.
12:00 And then into a darker brown phase.
12:02 The ripened one will have a darker shell,
12:04 but it'll also feel very full
12:05 as if there's like a lot of stuff inside of it,
12:07 almost trying to burst and get out of there.
12:09 So you can see if I open this one up here,
12:11 you really just need to peel the outside.
12:13 The inside pit is black and the outside flesh
12:16 is white translucent.
12:17 So it looks just like an eyeball.
12:20 These are also some of my favorite fruit.
12:21 They're very closely related to like lychees.
12:23 These are a little bit nuttier.
12:26 They taste like sugar water
12:27 with a little bit of nuttiness on it.
12:29 It's almost like eating an incredibly firm grape.
12:32 A lot of the labor comes from peeling the outside.
12:35 So just scoring them like this.
12:36 You can even leave half the shell
12:37 so some people have something to pick it up by.
12:39 I think it looks kind of cool,
12:40 almost like a little acorn.
12:42 So here we have a watermelon guava.
12:44 They are a slightly more rare varietal of guava.
12:47 There is no real way to tell the difference
12:49 between the pink ones and the white ones
12:51 from an outside visual perspective.
12:53 You can determine whether a guava is ripe
12:54 by picking it up and feeling whether it's heavy
12:56 for its size.
12:57 And then they'll turn from dark green
12:58 to like this lighter, almost like yellowish green
13:01 like you can see here.
13:02 In an ideal world, you get one
13:04 with no dark spots on the outside.
13:06 But if you do see the dark spots,
13:07 that means it's ready to go
13:08 and it's ready to go today right now.
13:10 So I'm gonna go ahead and cut into this
13:12 and hope that it's pink.
13:14 Oh, that's white.
13:15 I was promised a pink guava.
13:17 So I don't really know what's going on here.
13:19 Maybe we get lucky.
13:20 Pink.
13:22 Oh, there you go.
13:23 We got a pink one.
13:25 The seeds are completely edible and so is the skin,
13:27 but the skin can have like a bitter taste to it
13:30 or like a really not so fun aftertaste.
13:32 And because of that,
13:33 I like to cut them into little wedges like this.
13:35 Just separate them from the skin.
13:37 The texture of it is a little bit grainy.
13:40 The seeds are edible, though not the most easy to chew.
13:44 And while they may not be my favorite fruit,
13:46 they are quite beautiful,
13:47 especially when you get pink ones and not white ones.
13:50 White ones, white ones, white ones, white ones.
13:55 So this is a Korean honey melon.
13:58 A ripe honey melon will be heavy for its size.
13:59 So picking it up, tossing it,
14:01 and comparing it to ones of similar size
14:03 and picking a heavy one will help you determine
14:05 which one is slightly riper.
14:07 You also want to avoid dents or bruises or demarcations
14:10 because it'll penetrate all the way through the melon.
14:12 Even if it doesn't bruise inside,
14:13 the bruising will like sink through
14:15 and make the flesh like mealy and not nice.
14:18 Korean honey melons produce an aroma
14:20 when they're ready to be eaten.
14:21 A little bit musky, a little bit sweet,
14:23 the same way like a honeydew or cantaloupe would be.
14:25 The shades of gold here are like pretty even,
14:28 but the gaps in between are a little bit less gold.
14:31 They'll fill out a little bit more as they mature.
14:33 A little bit of give, like again, not crazy.
14:35 You just want to feel that it's firm, but like not rock solid.
14:38 They have seeds inside,
14:39 so I'll split them down the middle like this.
14:41 And while these are completely edible,
14:43 not a lot of fun to eat.
14:44 And I have put these guys on a couple of fruit plates
14:47 because the skin is edible.
14:49 Doesn't mean we want to eat it.
14:50 So you can cut pretty close to it.
14:53 They're almost like cucumber-like in texture.
14:55 If I go like this, you can hear it snap.
14:57 Crisp, ripe, sweet, like a better honeydew.
15:01 So I guess you can consider these designer strawberries.
15:05 This is a company called Oishi,
15:06 which means delicious in Japanese.
15:08 These are grown in a warehouse temperature
15:10 and humidity controlled to mimic the Japanese Alps.
15:13 So in terms of picking ripe ones,
15:15 they pick it at the ripest possible time.
15:17 So you get the ripest possible berry.
15:19 They do smell incredible.
15:21 So the best way to do a strawberry,
15:22 you could do it completely whole.
15:23 The leaves are not toxic.
15:26 Or you could bite it so that the top remains.
15:29 These are like actually incredibly sweet.
15:31 The texture is berry-esque.
15:33 Not crisp, but not too soft.
15:35 This is not an ad for Oishi.
15:37 Please send me more strawberries, though.
15:39 So now that you've seen all of our rare mystical fruit,
15:43 I think I'm about to assemble
15:43 the most chaotic fruit plate of all time.
15:46 Some of these fruits might not be super rare to you,
15:48 but they were incredibly hard for us to source
15:50 here in New York City.
15:51 And they can be a little bit daunting to get into,
15:53 especially if you have no idea where to start.
15:54 And I don't know, man.
15:56 She's kind of cute.
15:58 It's not often that I get to try a new flavor,
16:00 much less a new fruit.
16:01 That usually requires you hopping on a plane
16:03 and going some X thousand number of miles away.
16:05 And while you might not be able to secure
16:07 every single thing on this plate,
16:09 hopefully you can grab a couple of them
16:10 and they can end up on your plate at home.
16:12 (upbeat music)
16:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]