Hello everybody, it's time to talk about a
super fruit: goji berries.
Goji berries have a reputation for being
so healthy.
They increase immunity supposedly,
they make you live longer supposedly,
they cure cancer supposedly,
they give you x-ray vision supposedly,
they make you fly, make you see the future. You can
do so much with goji berries, if
any of the things people claim are true.
And are they true?
I don't care. I am NOT here for help. I am here for flavor.
So yeah, I was kindly sent two different
varieties of goji berry by
Garrett. So, Garrett,
thank you so much for taking the time to send these to me. Berries are a tricky thing to send in the mail,
so, thankfully, a few of these did make it and
look pretty good. He sent me two types.
One of them is a Chinese variety, and one of them is a Utah variety.
This one right here is the Chinese variety, and this one is the Utah variety.
They look almost exactly the same.
The Chinese variety is slightly smaller than the Utah variety, but he said that
the birds on his property
really, really like the Chinese ones; don't really care so much for the Idaho one.
So, we'll see if my tastes are similar to a bird's. He said also that
for better flavor in the Utah variety, don't chew on the seeds,
so that is something to keep in mind. And I also have
a bag of the dried ones. What people do with these in China is you can make tea out of it, you put it in soup.
But in the US, it's usually like it's in juices or some like granola and stuff like that.
You kind of slip it into everything, cuz it's like it's a superfood. I'm going to start with a Utah variety.
I'm not chewing the seeds. It's okay.
It tastes a little bit like a nightshade, but a little sweeter.
Maybe a little bit like the orange nightshade that I had, or like the black nightshade, a little bit more herbal. Now nightshade
is like maybe a little bit like tomato, cuz those are related.
Some of them have a little bit of a licorice kind of flavor.
These don't really taste like too much. Yeah, they're pretty mild.
Okay, I'm chewing on the seeds now.
I'm not really noticing a big difference, honestly. It's maybe a little bit bitter, but
not that bad. It tastes almost like a little bit salty.
It reminds me of a very mild
Gatorade. It's got like a little bit of sweetness,
but pretty low. On a scale of one to ten where ten is a sugarcube, this is like a two.
No tartness to it. Not too much to it. The Chinese variety is supposed to be better according to Garrett,
so let's try that next.
Hmm, yep, better flavor. It reminds me a little bit of the
goldenberry or Cape gooseberry or
ground cherry, or whatever you want to call it. The sweetness on this one's a little bit more.
I'd say it's like a three out of ten...
maybe a four out of ten.
No tartness to it, again. The herbal flavor is much lower on the Chinese variety.
I chewed on the seeds-- it doesn't make any difference really. They're a little bit juicier, even though they're smaller,
they feel like a little juicier. So those are actually pretty good. I like that. I think that is something that if
I had growing in my backyard or something,
then I would totally be picking those all the time to like blend them into things.
I mean, if they are actually good for you, then
they also taste pretty good. So, that's nice.
So it's been several months since I filmed the fresh goji berry video, and I wanted to
come in with a different
dry
goji berry, because the one that I was holding in the video was this one, which I got from a Chinese grocery store. And honestly,
these are very, very bad. They're not very good.
They kind of have like a weird, like herbal shop, kind of flavor to them.
I think just like wherever these were dried out,
they probably were dried out in like a batch in a room with a bunch of other stinky things going around, and it picked up
those flavors. So, I did make a review of this, and it just wasn't...
I don't think it's an accurate assessment of what goji berries taste like dry, cuz I was not a fan of these.
But since making that video, I was sent a bag of organic, natural
goji berries, with nothing in it. The Chinese ones here, these have
sulfites in them. They've got some added chemicals to it. This is
100% dried-out goji berries.
Okay, first let's get some tea going. I'm gonna
put inside this pot
a cup of water and
1 tablespoon of the goji berries, and I'm gonna let this come to a boil. While that's boiling,
let's try a couple of the fresh berries to show you what they taste like when they're dried out.
I could eat those out of hand if I was so inclined.
But I can see why they're usually blended with something.
They're not eaten like raisins or anything. If I were to relate this to like one other kind of like dry fruit,
it feels a little bit like if I'm eating dried
strawberries. It's got like a little bit of strawberry flavor, but
much more mild and
with the addition of that like slight bitterness. So it's not bad.
It's not something I would be eating like by the handful unless I had a reason to do so. If you do
take stock in like all the health benefits, and you want to take goji berries, I think the lesson here is
that you should get like a good quality one; a good one that doesn't have any additional things in it
instead of getting one that is cheap. This is like, this was six dollars at an Asian supermarket, which is very, very cheap
for what it is.
I don't know what these go for, but I'm sure it's gonna be more than that.
If you want to try it out, go to food2live.com and
see how much they are selling those for. You can get them somewhere else.
It's probably gonna be a lot more than what you get at the Chinese grocery store, but
the flavor, I imagine, is going to be better. So, I'm gonna try one of the Chinese store ones.
It tastes stale, and more herbal, and more bitter.
So, I think if you were going to
mix it in with something, you maybe wouldn't notice it quite so much. But eating it
straight like that, you really can.
So, I guess it depends what you're doing with it. Maybe those ones are fine for certain purposes.
But if you're gonna be using it in any way where goji berries are actually like a highlighted flavor,
I would avoid the cheap ones and get one like that's a little bit of a better quality.
All right, it's boiling. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm going to turn this on
to simmer, and let that simmer for five minutes.
If you're wondering what this sound is, it is my cat playing with a toy.
So I apologize for the sound quality, but just look how happy she is.
You can't deny that, come on.
So cute, my god. Okay. It's been about five minutes. I'm going to turn off the heat and
strain it into this little glass here.
It's got an interesting smell to it. It's very hot too. I'll have to try not to burn my fingers here.
You ever have Nissin brand
oriental noodles, like the ramen noodles that you can get for like 20 cents a pack?
It smells like that. It smells very savory.
I don't know what that smell is, like maybe like a little mushroomy, or
if that's maybe
ginger or something.
Very savory. Whatever kind of
sweetness and that like strawberry flavor that those dry ones had-- and they're the same berries in there--
that's not coming out so much as the herbal flavor is. And that herbal flavor,
when you're putting it in like a tea,
tastes more like a soup: a little oniony, a little salty even, a little mushroomy.
Hmm. Which I guess makes sense, because goji berries are used to make soup.
I think if I were going to make a tea just to drink, I would put like some sugar in there,
maybe some lemon juice, some other flavors to work with it, to get it more
into like a fruit like flavor. Because that flavor is... it's not like tea.
It's not like fruit. It is like soup. It's like way too savory, I think, to just drink
when you're wanting like an actual juice or an actual tea. But, yeah, if you blend it with something, I'm sure that it's fine.
So, I think that's about it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope you learned something about goji berries.
I know I don't really have much to say in the way of health benefits, and that's why a lot of people go after
goji berries.
I haven't been really seeing a whole lot of information about the flavor of
goji berries, and what they taste like. If you're interested in having goji berries as something to grow, or something to try, or if you
want to go into the the health thing,
I hope this gives a little bit more information about what goji berries taste like.
So, whether or not you abide by all that health stuff, they are still pretty good.
Well, I really hope you enjoyed that video, guys.
If you did, you may want to check out the video that is below me right now. That should be good too.
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