Jackfruit has become a popular meat alternative in the past few years. It’s popping up on menus and in grocery stores, prepared in many different ways. You can find it on tacos or on a vegetarian “pulled pork” sandwich at the BBQ joint, and anywhere else meat or proteins are found.
The trees are native to a South Asian region that’s home to the modern countries of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Burma, and Thailand, where it’s used widely in sweet and savory dishes. The watermelon-shaped fruit can be three feet long and weigh 100 pounds, and it’s covered with spikes like an oversized medieval weapon. A single tree can produce as many as 500 fruits in a single year. That’s 50,000 pounds of jackfruit for all of you non-math majors, an astounding amount of food.
