Gak: The Unknown Fruit With Wonderful Properties

Video: Gak: The Unknown Fruit With Wonderful Properties

Video: Gak: The Unknown Fruit With Wonderful Properties
Video: Nastya and Dad in the yummy Fruits and Vegetables dance challenge 2024, November
Gak: The Unknown Fruit With Wonderful Properties
Gak: The Unknown Fruit With Wonderful Properties
Anonim

The Gak fruit grows in the warmer parts of Southeast Asia. The fruits are the size of a small melon and when ripe they acquire a dark orange color. They have a prickly bark that is not fit for consumption.

The inner core is full of edible, purple-red oil sacs that have a very mild taste. They have a moderate sweetness. Some people compare their taste to that of cucumber, avocado or melon with a hint of carrot, and the seeds have a slight nutty taste.

Hook fruits have a relatively short season, lasting only two months (December and January), but nevertheless the fruit plays an important role in festive dishes, as well as in folk medicine. The Vietnamese fruit is quite unknown outside its homeland.

As it is harvested only two months a year and the export of fresh fruit is limited, the most common on the market is in the form of juice, which is sold as a food supplement with a high content of plant nutrients.

Hook fruits have a particularly high content of lycopene, over 70 times the amount of lycopene found in tomatoes and over 10 times the amount of beta-carotene than found in carrots and sweet potatoes.

hook
hook

In a 2005 study, researchers found that Vietnamese fruit contained a protein that inhibited tumor growth.

Due to its low sugar content, Gak is usually mixed with other fruits and sugar for better taste.

In cooking, it is most often used to prepare the traditional Xoi Gac dish (better known as red sticky rice). The dish is an indispensable part of the most important holiday in Vietnamese culture Tet (Vietnamese New Year).

It is also present in the menu of most Vietnamese weddings. Another unusual way is to mix it with tomato sauce and use it in the preparation of pizzas and other pasta.

Recommended: