How to Eat Sapodilla
You never forget your first sapodilla. These unassuming looking fruits have scoopably soft, malty sweet fruit that’s like eating a slice of nature’s pumpkin pie!
Sapodilla has a flavor profile all its own, making sapodilla a great introduction to all kinds of sapote fruits. This one is exceptionally sweet, with flavors reminiscent of brown sugar, sweet potato and pear. They have pearlike texture too, with a rich molasses taste that’s often described as malty.
Seeds of sapodilla fruit are inedible and can be dangerous if swallowed because of a spikey hook that protrudes from one end of the seed. Unripened sapodillas are inedible too, because the fruit’s powerful astringency gives an uncomfortable, chalky mouthfeel.
When fully ripened, sapodilla can be enjoyed raw or in countless cooked preparations. Stir the fruit into your yogurt, shake into salad dressings or fold it into pastry creams. Cooking sapodilla gives this brown sugary fruit a roasted flavor that tastes delicious in sweet and savory recipes from soups to jams, roasted meats to seafood.
How to prepare your sapodilla will depend on the recipe you’re using. Here are the most common ways to prepare sapodilla for just about any recipe.
It’s easy to slice a sapodilla. First, slice the sapodilla in half longways, working around the large seeds in the center. Then, carefully remove the inedible seeds from the center and discard them. Finally, grab your favorite spoon and eat it directly from the peel!
Eating ripe sapodilla fruits is easy! Their refreshingly juicy flesh adds brown sugary sweetness to many recipes. Enjoy the fruit raw directly from the peel, but remember to remove those dangerous seeds before digging in. It can be used in raw recipes like granitas, salads and fruit purees. Cooking sapodilla enhances the malty, pumpkin pie flavor that the fruit is known for, especially in sauces, desserts and jams.
- Baking: Sapodilla can be baked into cakes, creams pies and delicious fruit compotes.
- Confection: The brown sugar and pumpkiny pear flavor of sapodilla is delicious in jams, jellies and candy making.
Ripe sapodillas are about as close as you can get to naturally pureed fruit! As such, their sweet, scoopable flesh is incredibly easy to add to all kinds of drinks. From stirring into plain water for a fruity take on hydration to shaking into cocktails for a sweet libation, sapodillas are sure to be your new favorite fruit to drink.
Here are some easy ways use sapodilla in your drinks:
- Juicing: Feed the ripe sapodilla pulp into your juicer or gently mash the fruit into a thick liquid for a malty, sweet fruit juice.
- Smoothies: Whether you have leftover sapodilla or want to use a whole sapodilla in smoothies, we recommend freezing it for best use. To prepare your sapodilla for blended drinks, freeze the soft fruit in ice cube trays.
- Water: Stir scoops of ripe sapodilla into your water bottle along with fresh herbs like mint for an eye catching and delicious refresher.
- Cocktails: The deep molasses flavor of sapodilla makes it a deliciously fresh addition to cocktails and batch drinks.
Sapodilla fruits are best left at room temperature to ripen, up to a week or more. Once ripened, immediately refrigerate sapodilla in a sealed container. Sapodillas will remain fresh this way for up to a week.
To freeze sapodilla, wait until they are fully ripened then scoop all of the fruit from the peel. Discard the peel and seeds. Then, store the fruit in an airtight container or ice cube tray in the freezer for up to a month.
Wondering where to buy the rare and delicious sapodilla? We’ve got great news for you! FruitStand is proud to partner with small, specialty farmers to bring you exceptional quality sapodilla. To be the first to know when FruitStand is shipping sapodilla harvests, join our email newsletter!
Do you feel like a sapodilla eating expert now? Show us your favorite ways to prepare and eat sapodilla by tagging us in your culinary masterpieces on Instagram @Fruitstandcom!