How is tamarillo and what it is

Tell us how to eat tamarillo? My husband brought this miracle from a business trip, at first I thought it was tomatoes. They cut them into slices and tried to eat them together with the skin. But it turned out that it is completely inedible and bitter. Maybe it's better to just add it to dishes, for example, to a pie as a filling?

Did you know that tomatoes can grow on trees? If you don't believe me, visit the greenhouses that specialize in the cultivation of exotic tropical plants. There you will probably see a small evergreen tree or shrub up to 4 m high, on the branches of which red or yellow tomatoes hang in clusters. This is tamarillo - a subtropical culture brought to us from America and New Zealand. What is a strange plant and how is tamarillo, if you are lucky to find it?

Tamarillo is a fruit or still a vegetable

For the outward similarity of fruits, tamarillo is called a tomato tree, because small "tomatoes" grow on the branches. Outwardly, it is a rather compact tree, and sometimes it is a tall shrub. It is covered all year round with large green leaves of an oblong oval shape.

At the beginning of summer and until its very end, beautiful fruits gradually ripen in clusters on the branches. They are small, egg-shaped, up to a maximum of 10 cm in length and 5 cm in circumference. Top covered with thin and shiny skin. The pulp is very juicy, and inside there are seeds, like those of tomatoes.

The taste of tamarillo is dominated by sweet and sour notes, a cross between passion fruit and tomato. Depending on the variety, tamarillo can have a different color and taste:

The red fruits are covered with red skin, but the flesh is orange with red seeds. The most sour of the species with a predominance of "tomato" flavor.
Orange tamarillos are the largest and slightly sweeter than red ones. They are orange on the top and inside, but the seeds are dark.
The yellow fruits are the sweetest, but also the smallest. Both the pulp and the seeds are also yellow in color.

In the scientific literature, tomarillo is called cyfomandra beetroot, but at the same time it is a fruit.

How to eat tamarillo

Exotic fruits can be eaten raw or added to various dishes. But there is one nuance: the fruit has a bitter skin, while it is dense, and the flesh itself is quite soft.

You can enjoy fruit and not spoil the taste with bitterness in one of two ways:

pour boiling water over them, then peel off the skin;
cut in half and spoon out the pulp.

When buying tamarillo, you need to pay attention to its appearance. Ripe fruits will be slightly soft when pressed, but will quickly regain their shape. They can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or frozen with the skins removed.

Red tamarillo is added to salads and meat dishes, and yellow ones, due to their sweetness, are used in baked goods and desserts.

Useful properties of tamarillo and how it is eaten - video

tamarillo