Tamarind

So: Tamarind. Some people know about it, some people don't. But even if you've never heard of it, you've probably eaten it. It's in Worcestershire sauce and some bloody mary mixes (at least Zing Zang). It's also used to flavor some curries. And for the most part that's been the extent of my experience with it for the past decade or so: making Massaman Curry. Lately I've been trying to become more familiar with it, primarily in the form of candies. But this past week I had the chance to pick up a box of the actual fruit, so I thought I'd share a little bit.

So the tamarind fruit is basically a seed pod. There's usually from three to six seeds in the pod. The seeds themselves aren't edible, but the goopy pulp around them is, and that's what's used in the various concentrates and pastes. There's two varieties: sweet and sour. Sour tamarind is the same as sweet tamarind, it's just harvested earlier, before the fruit ripens. Really all tamarind has sweet and sour elements; it's just a matter of what the ratio is. Sour tamarind is used to flavor savory dishes like curry. Sweet tamarind is used mostly in candies and jellies and the like.

Here, take a look:

The outside of the seed pod is hard, thin and brittle. In trying to break it apart, it's not unusual for it to shatter into pieces.

There are long fibers running through the seed pod. 

So there's the pulp. It's not necessarily easy to get out of there. The fibers are in the way, and it sticks to the seeds, so you've got to scrape it of them.

But it's worth it. It's super tasty. Beth and I spent a night working on some various things, like making drinks using it. We found a hard ginger beer that it goes well with, and it tastes really good mixed with a dry hard cider. I've been trying to use it to flavor kombucha during second fermentation, but I haven't gotten it quite right yet. We'll keep trying to find some new (to us) uses for it, and we'll post our results when we find something good. In the meantime, this Wikipedia article has a big old list of dishes from around the world that make good use of tamarind.