Green mangosteen has a sour, acrid taste, can only be harvested once a year, but it is an expensive ingredient to make a “famous” specialty salad in the Southeast.
Mangosteen is famous specialty fruit in the Southeast region, the most delicious in Binh Duong. From April to the end of June is the time when mangosteen is in season. Besides the ripe burgundy, succulent, sweet, and fragrant mangosteen fruits costing about 45,000-80,000 VND/kg, mangosteen with green skin, crispy white flesh, sour taste, mild acrid taste with the expensive price is popular with many people. buy.
If ripe mangosteen is a delicious summer treat, green mangosteen is an indispensable ingredient in the famous salad in Binh Duong. Green mangosteen salad has a strange taste, is processed with a miracle and can not be enjoyed in every season.
To make this famous dish, from the stage of choosing green mangosteen to the processing stage, it requires meticulous work. Mangosteen fruits chosen for salad have green skin, but must be old enough for the inside to be crispy, with a sweet, sour, and acrid taste.
In addition, when processing mangosteen flesh with green skin, it will produce a beautiful flower-shaped product, mixed with salad without being crushed or turning from white to brown like ripe mangosteen. From there, the food ensures the aesthetics, increases the attractive feeling to help diners enjoy.
In addition, the preliminary processing of green mangosteen is also said to be the most difficult and requires the most experience and ingenuity of the workers. The green mangosteen peel is quite hard and has a lot of yellow latex. When the harvest is complete, people soak the fruit in dilute salt water to reduce the pus, it is easier to peel the skin, and ensure that the inside is still white and crispy.
After that, the processor must peel the fruit under the running water continuously to clean the pus and move the knife carefully so that the pus does not stick to the ivory white inside. The mangosteen “rice” has just been taken out and soaked in ice water to keep its color, ensure its crispiness, and reduce the acrid.
Mangosteen flesh is cut into circles, shaped into a beautiful flower and then soaked with a mixture of vinegar, sugar or lemon to not darken. When eating, people take it out and mix it with other ingredients and spices to enjoy.
Experiencing elaborate and meticulous preliminary processing stages, the flesh of the mangosteen fruit remains white, crispy and not crushed and soft.
In Binh Duong, people often use boiled chicken combined with green mangosteen intestines to make salad. There are also other ingredients such as shredded carrots, onions, roasted peanuts, fried onions, laksa leaves, etc. The ingredients after being prepared will be mixed with chili garlic fish sauce.
Depending on the taste of each person and the culture of each locality, people can add or subtract other ingredients to create the famous mangosteen salad. The soft, sweet taste of chicken mixed with the sweet, slightly sour and slightly acrid taste of mangosteen seems to melt in the mouth, making anyone who enjoys it for the first time have a strong impression.
Not only is it a specialty famous for its elaborate processing, green mangosteen salad is also considered a nutritious dish. Mangosteen contains a lot of fiber to help the digestive system work better, accelerate the digestion of chicken in the body,… In addition, xanthones in mangosteen also work to reduce the effect of bad cholesterol. and effectively prevent obesity.
If before, diners could only enjoy green mangosteen salad when traveling to Binh Duong or the Southeast provinces, now, this dish has been transported to many provinces such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, etc. Ho Chi Minh via air.
Because the processing method is quite difficult and requires a lot of experience, small traders often pre-process green mangosteen, pack it in vacuum and then send it by plane to diners everywhere. Thanks to that, housewives can show off their talents in making the “famous” salad in the Southeast without spending too much effort.
Each kilogram of green mangosteen intestine costs from 450,000 to 650,000 VND, depending on the time. Diners can also enjoy this dish only in the summer because the time of the green mangosteen season is from mid-April to the end of June. Follow Dân trí