Pulled Jackfruit Tacos

Make Ahead and Storage

The filling keeps 4 days refrigerated and freezes for 3 months. Re-crisp under the grill before serving.

Making Pulled Jackfruit Tacos

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1. Drain and rinse the jackfruit. Cut away the hard core from each piece and discard the seeds if they are firm.

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2. Shred the flesh with your fingers or two forks into strands. This takes a few minutes and it is what makes it convincing.

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3. Heat the oil in a wide pan and cook the onion 8 minutes, then the garlic for 1 minute.

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4. Add the chipotle paste, tomato purée, cumin, paprika and oregano and fry 2 minutes until it darkens.

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5. Add the shredded jackfruit and stir to coat, then pour in the orange juice, stock, soy sauce, sugar and salt.

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6. Simmer, part-covered, for 20 minutes, until the liquid has almost entirely gone and the mixture is glossy rather than wet.

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7. Spread it on a lined tray and put it under a hot grill for 5 to 8 minutes, stirring once, until the edges darken and crisp. This step is the recipe.

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8. Squeeze over the lime juice.

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9. Warm the tortillas in a dry pan and build with jackfruit, pickled onion, avocado and coriander.

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Worth Knowing

• Green jackfruit in brine or water, never in syrup. The syrup kind is a dessert fruit and will not work.
• Cut out the hard core. It never softens.
• The grill at the end is not optional; without it the texture is wet and one-note.

Some Background

Jackfruit on its own is bland and slightly wet, and the two things that fix it are both about texture. Shredding it by hand into strands rather than leaving chunks gives it something to do in the mouth; and finishing under a hot grill after braising drives off the last of the moisture and lets the edges catch and crisp, exactly as carnitas do. Skipping that final blast is why most jackfruit dishes taste of the sauce and nothing else. Brine-packed, not syrup — the syrup kind is a different product entirely.

Serving Ideas

A cold Mexican lager · Charred corn · Salsa verde

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Instant Pot Black Beans, Pan de Muerto, Refried Beans.

Ingredient Swaps

• Lemon is the everyday swap for lime in this kind of dish — the acidity plays the same role even though the flavour is not identical.
• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
• Fresh herbs work in place of the dried oregano at roughly three times the quantity — a teaspoon of dried is about a tablespoon of fresh, chopped.

Nutrition per Serving

Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: a drained tin is counted at its full weight, liquid included, so those lines run high; where a line offers a choice of foods, only one of them is counted; part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.

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