Tropical fruits of Vietnam

Tropical fruits of Vietnam offer a great variety and the most exquisite taste. If it’s your first time in Asia, the tropical fruits of Vietnam will surprise you with their diversity and exotic looks. The climate of the country contributes to the abundance of juicy and fresh tropical fruits on the shelves of Vietnam.

Tropical fruits of Vietnam

Tropical fruits of Vietnam will delight you both with their taste and original looks.

Pitahaya (or pitaya) would be the first to grab your attention. This fruit has other beautiful name – dragon fruit. It tastes like kiwi sore some people and like strawberries for others, but it is really impossible to say exactly what pitahaya tastes like, being so unique and delicate. Remember, that a dragon fruit can be white or red on the inside, try fruits of different colors and choose your favorite. Travelling around Vietnam, you can spot the dragon fruit plantations easily. Each pitahaya bush is illuminated with a special lamp.

You can find mangoes in many European supermarkets. But the Vietnamese mango is much juicier and sweeter. Ripe yellow mangoes are used to make juices and smoothies, and green mangoes are added to salads.

There are coconuts growing on palm trees at every turn in Vietnam, that makes them very cheap. Coconut peddlers will “open” you a coconut and give a straw to make it convenient for you to drink sweet milk from the nut shell.

Passion fruits grow all year round in Vietnam. This fruit has a sour taste. It’s brownish purple on the outside and bright orange on the inside. The mix of passion fruit and mango juices is especially tasty. These fruits go very well together. Mango gives the drink the sweetness of honey, and the passion fruit adds its sour taste.

Durian is notorious for its peculiar smell. It’s even forbidden to eat it in public places and some hotels. But it is still worth to try it, since the pulp has a delicate and pleasant taste, despite its strong smell.

Longans (“dragon eyes”) are small balls with a unique sweet and sour taste. You can consume lots of them just hanging out with your friends and eating them like chips. Longan fruits contain vitamin C, calcium, iron and phosphorus.

Sugar-apple, or sweetsop has a truly unique sugar taste. Its form resembles an apple, but covered with scales, and its taste reminds of a sweet ripe pear. Remove the scaly peel before eating and enjoy the pulp, spitting out the black seeds it contains.

The burgundy-purple skin of a mangosteen (not to be confused with a mango) hides white edible flesh beneath. Some people say that a peeled mangosteen resembles garlic very much. But the taste of these two plants has nothing in common. Mangosteen flesh is sweet and tender. Many people consider this fruit to be one of the most delicious in the world!

Jackfruits are huge and are usually sold in pieces, cut and peeled. Unripe jackfruits are cooked like vegetables.

Bright red rambutan fruits are covered with brown hairs up to two centimeters long, making the bunches of this fruit look very funny. Rambutan pulp has a sweet and sour taste, resembling sweet grapes a bit.

Carambola (better known as star fruit because of its star-like shape) is an excellent source of vitamin C. Carambola fruits are crispy and juicy.

Tangerines and oranges. You may be familiar with those fruits, but doesn’t mean they’re not worth trying. Tangerines in Vietnam are amazingly sweet and taste much better than ones imported to northern countries. Oranges may have a green skin. This does not mean that the fruits are not ripe. You can peel this green orange to find it to be orange inside and sweet to taste.

Also, there are two types of watermelons in Vietnam, yellow ones and red ones, familiar to us. The yellow ones are not in any way inferior in flavor to their red counterparts.