- This here is a papaya.
Nothing too crazy there.
That's why I'm not talking about papaya today.
I am talking about something that is related to papayas,
but it's really, really cool, the babaco.
This smells amazing.
It is stinking up my room right now with good things.
And this is an Ecuadorian fruit
that's actually a hybrid
between two relatives of papaya,
but not papaya itself.
One of those relatives I've had,
that is the mountain papaya,
which I found that one in Columbia.
The other one is the toronche.
So if you take the toronche and the mountain papaya
and you hybridize them together,
you get this baby right here.
This was sent to me by Nate, over at wildlandsplants.com.
This is a farm and a nursery.
So if you're somebody who grows plants
or lives in the California area and wants to check it out,
check out this website right here.
And Nate, thank you.
So if you watch a lot of cartoons like I do,
then there's one thing that you probably know about papayas
is that they are juicy and full of papain.
They make you strong like Popeye.
Popeye, papain, Popeye, papain.
Nah, forget it.
It's true that the papayas have something in it
called papain.
And what else is true is that the babaco
has three times as much papain as the papaya.
That's pretty cool.
But what does it mean?
Papain, I don't believe has anything in it
that makes you strong like Popeye,
but it does do some pretty cool things.
One thing is that papain is used as a meat tenderizer,
it is used as a teeth whitener,
and, I might get in trouble for saying this,
but papain is sometimes used by people
to cheat on their drug test.
If you eat a lot of papain,
it's going to mess with your urinalysis,
so sometimes you'll get a false negative.
Now, you didn't hear that from me.
And I also should point out
that papain for some people can cause problems.
Papain, because it is a meat tenderizer,
it's similar to like pineapples and stuff like that,
where it can cause a burning sensation.
And if you're somebody that is sensitive to papain,
you can get a severe reaction to it.
So, be careful out there guys, okay?
That's all for educational purposes. (laughs)
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So, the way you cut open a babaco
is kind of like a papaya.
You trim off the end
and the point.
And you put it on its side,
and you cut it down the center, just like that.
Now, one thing you may notice,
is that the babaco is basically seedless.
There's a couple of little seeds here and there,
but it's not like a papaya where you cut it open,
it's just like chock-full of seeds.
Before I lose any more juice,
I'm gonna kind of like funnel it into this bowl here.
I've seen a few videos online
of people attempting to eat babaco,
but not really knowing how to do it.
Most of the information I got
was from watching Ecuadorian videos
and looking at Ecuadorian sites.
And the most common preparation in Ecuador.
at least from my searching for recipes,
is something called a dulce de babaco,
which I'm sure I'm butchering,
so like a candy babaco where you take chunks of this
and you cook it in a sugar syrup.
I'm not going to do that
just because I want to get a taste
of mostly of like what the flesh of this is like.
So the first thing I'm gonna do
is just scrape out some of this snot
that's on the inside and the seeds.
Although that is edible,
it is not the most ideal part.
So here's a bowl full of babaco juice, seeds, and snot.
I will try that delicious stew in a moment,
but I wanna deal with the flesh here first.
So next, I'm gonna skin this,
and this is not something you need to do.
You can eat the skin.
But I've heard some people say
that they don't like the skin.
So I'm guessing it is similar to papayas,
'cause papayas you can also eat the skin,
but you may not want to.
Ha.
This is gonna be a tricky one.
(laughs) I can tell you right now,
there's a lot of flavor in this.
Let's break it down.
It's tart, it's more tart than a papaya.
It's also sweet, but not very sweet.
It's less sweet than a papaya.
I think this would actually be better
if you put sugar on it,
and that's often what people do
is they'll sprinkle some sugar on top.
The texture on it is kind of amazing.
And it's really, really juicy.
Look what happens when I just kind of squeeze it
a little bit.
That's how juicy it is.
It's actually like dripping.
With just a little bit of pressure from my fingers,
it's dripping from the bottom.
Now, when I was reading online
of people's experience with this,
everyone had a different explanation
of what this tasted like.
And I've heard cherimoya.
Another guy said it tastes like pineapple
and papaya combined.
And one person said it tastes like creepy crawlers.
So maybe it depends on whatever nostalgia
you're pulling out.
I think, depending on who you are,
this is gonna taste different to you.
For me, I can understand those flavors,
but it's not the main one I'm getting.
The main flavor I'm getting is feijoa.
Feijoa is a guava relative
that's sometimes called pineapple guava,
'cause it's got kind of a guava and pineapple
sort of flavor.
Another flavor that I'm getting is kind of like soursop.
A tart Annona sort of taste,
but a lot of different tropical flavors in there.
It does taste like a papaya, but not the entire papaya,
if you know what I mean,
it's got like certain chemical compounds
that are inside this.
And I think the main flavor that you get from a papaya
is lacking in this one.
So that's the flesh.
Let's try some of the broth.
The juice is fine,
but it's missing some of the bite of the flesh.
The flesh has more sourness, this doesn't.
It kind of reminds me of like coconut water.
And yes, yes, I will try some of the snot.
Mm-mm.
It's pretty gross.
Not wild about the texture of that snot,
but the flavor is more like the water than the flesh.
You can eat the slime if you want,
but I can see why a lot of the recipes
I was looking at tell you to remove it.
And finally, let's try the skin.
Some recipes tell you to remove the skin,
some say to leave it on.
Let's see if the skin has a different flavor
when I just eat it all on its own.
It's maybe a little soapy tasting.
So I would say that if you're using this in a juice,
you probably wouldn't notice.
But if you're eating like actual slices of it,
including the skin just raw,
you might want to take the skin off.
So I have a little bit of criticism for this fruit
and that is the flavors are good,
but it feels like there needs to be something
to bring them together.
And I feel that way about the papaya as well.
With the papaya...
Usually when I eat a papaya,
I put a little bit of lime juice on it
and it makes it so much better.
With this, I wouldn't put lime juice on it,
but I would add something to it.
I'd say either like another sweeter fruit to it,
like some berries or some coconut maybe,
or if you wanna really highlight
just the babaco flavor, just some sugar.
And a lot of the recipes for using this,
even like some of the more traditional Ecuadorian recipes,
have you put sugar and spices in with it.
(upbeat music)
(juice splashing)
It's good, but it's falling a little flat.
It needs something in there
and I think what would help
is a spoonful of sugar to help the babaco go down.
That's the way to do it.
Just a little bit of sugar
and it really brings out a really nice flavor in there.
I'm getting a little bit more
of like the strawberry sort of note,
definitely still feeling the feijoa,
definitely still feeling the soursop,
the pineapple sort of flavor, getting that.
Mm-mm.
Makes a world of difference to add a little sugar to that.
You know what?
I have an idea.
I think it's a good idea.
You know how earlier, I said that the problem
that I have with the babaco
is similar to the problem
that I have with the regular papaya
and why I put lime juice on a papaya
and why I would put sugar on this?
I think the problem that these two have,
like the element that's missing,
is in the other fruit.
So if you're to bring them together, that might solve it.
Maybe like no sugar, no lime juice.
But if you were to combine babaco with papaya,
maybe magic will happen.
Let's try it.
(upbeat music)
Nope, (laughs) it's still missing something.
I think putting papaya and babaco together,
didn't help it.
It didn't help it.
The sugar in the babaco fixes it.
The lime juice in the papaya fixes it.
But putting those two flavors together,
it still is missing something.
So I'd say, even like this,
it needs some sugar or another sort of fruit
or something to bring it together.
So, yeah, I was wrong.
Well, anyway, I think that's about it for the babaco.
Thanks once again, to Nate
for sending me this incredible fruit.
And again, anyone watching who grows plants
or wants to learn more of what Nate is doing,
check out wildlandsplants.com.
And I'll see you all next time.
Bye-bye.
I would like to give a shout out to Smarter Every Day,
Alt-Pod and the Harbor Leaf Tea Company.
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Thanks so much guys, bye-bye.