HOW many of you will picture soursop as a fruit ready for eating, yields to even the slightest pressure from your finger or thumb.
In the village, children gather around and dip in this fruit, leaking their hands to taste and smell the beautiful aroma-an explosion of tropical deliciousness in the mouth.
Soursop is called guanabana in Spanish, and graviola in Portuguese. In Cambodia it’s prickly custard apple, in Thailand it’s Brazilian pawpaw, and in the US and here in Fiji it’s soursop fruit.
Finger-licking good
Whatever you call it, this strange-looking fruit is finger-licking good and offers an impressive range of health benefits.
Its fruit, leaves and tree bark are known to alleviate fevers, stomachaches, high blood pressure and parasites like lice.
On the outside, soursop looks like a cousin of another spiny green fruit, the custard apple.
On the inside it’s white, soft and fleshy with a smattering of smooth, black seeds.
When it’s just the right amount of ripeness the soursop tastes like an explosion of sweet followed by a delectable sour tang.
While soursop can be relatively easy to grow, the size of the fruit and speed at which it ripens when picked bring a lot of challenges for commercial sales of the fruit which is why you never seem to see plenty of them at the roadside markets.
At the Suva market, soursop are sold depending on its size. If you are lucky you can buy one for $3.
The website, wwww.healthyearting.com stated that once soursop ripens, it lasts about 24 hours before it basically turns to mush unless it’s refrigerated, making it difficult to transport if you pick the fruit too late. This is why soursop is a rare treat, unless you are lucky enough to have a soursop tree in your own yard.
If you’ve never been game to try soursop, I can only describe it as tropical deliciousness itself!
It’s an explosion
The website says the flavour is a combination of citrus with pineapple and strawberry, with a touch of creamy flavour of coconut. It’s quite juicy, with a bit of a tangy explosion when you eat it with an unmistakable creamy aftertaste which is why it is so popular turned into sorbets and ice creams.
It’s a beautiful fruit that lends itself to cooking as well as eaten raw.
They make great jams and candy but it is soursop’s blend of tropical fruit notes that make it perfect in the bar.
Cooling and invigorating, soursoup juice is the most popular way to enjoy this superfruit. Extracting the pulp can be messy and is best done in a bowl to remove the seeds, after which it is strained with coconut milk, coconut water, condensed milk or plain rainwater, and served with crushed ice and a dash of lime.
Soursop coconut sorbet is one of my favourite ways to make the most of this rare fruit as you can store it in the freezer for months.
The only problem is that it never lasts that long as once friends learn I churned the creamy soursop with fresh coconut milk, wild vanilla bean, and ripened pineapple, my small tub doesn’t make it to the end of the week.
But forget about juices, shakes, cocktails and sorbet.
There are many things you can do with soursop. You can make juices, ice cream and smoothies with its creamy white flesh. The leaves and tree bark are also powerful herbal medicines and are often made into tea infusion.