Tacaco has special flavor, deep boiled when fully rippen, can be used to eat alone as an appetizer. You can peel it off like a banana from the tip (the side without thorns) When the fruit is tender it is used like green beans. Nowadays becoming rare its mostly used only to add flavor to stews. Tacacos were not planted but kind of favored wild wine letting it grow in bushy or shadow fences or borders in coffee orchards. The fruits just gathered when falling off.
I wrote a comment some 100 videos ago where I hoped for you to visit costa rica and now I really enjoy all this videos! Still, you haven't even started with my favorite ones :D Chan, Cas, carao, cubaces, lengua de vaca (berry), costa rican blue berries (consanguineum) and the bessst thing ever Gavilana leaves! Pura vida!
Looks like a small green version of the poison sandbox tree exploding "fruit". I'm assuming there's no relation because this has only one seed and it's edible
Yeah the Tree you are thinking of is in the Euphorbiaceae (Spurge) family. Tacaco is in the Sechium genus and the Gourd Family. Neat running into you here, been a looooong time fan.
30 plus years ago, my grandma used to sit me on her kitchen table and made me peel off a bowl full of those for the dinner stew. Of course not all of them made it into the stew. I'll find me some next weekend in my local Feria del Agricultor! Pura vida!
Fun fact about air bnb knives, its usually impossible to find an actual knife sharpener, but any tile or granite or smooth cement edge you can find can be used to hone the knife. It doesn't damage whatever you hone it on but the knife usually becomes miles more useable. I guess you could also try honing on another knife but I've gotten mixed results with that. I guess you could also use the rough unfired underside of a ceramic plate that has that little lip sticking out that it stands on.
Guess what I bought today at the San Isidro feria? Tacacos! There are a couple (more ripe?) red ones in the bag. I just opened one- juicy, milky, sweet and a little dry mouth. I’ll cook the green ones.
I'll be honest, I spaced out for a second near the later half of the video and thought you were putting straight up _toothpaste_ on that half of tacaco. Glad I was wrong lol. Always nice to see another one of your uploads though-- when I thought I've seen it all, I get a pleasant surprise that there's even fruits out there!
In the shot of the tacacos in the market, there was a basket of noni right next to them! Euurrgh! That might have put me off buying the tacacos, because I would have had to get so close to the noni and their smell. You are brave, my friend. (I first encountered noni growing at a park in Hawaii, and had no idea what they were. They looked white and bloated, like one of those beetle grubs you dig up in the garden, and they smelled like dirty sweat socks and cheese, and I didn't even get that close to them!)
Again, you provide me with information I guarantee you I'd absolutely never have without you and your excellent videos. These guys look like something you'd crack open specifically to get at the seed inside. They almost remind me of the almond fruits you made a video about back in the day, just a lot bigger.
Wow, would you look at that.. a very special fruit was in the basket to the left of the tacaco basket.. i wonder why he didnt pick that one up and give it a try ;D
I used to remove chayote seeds carefully, not realizing that they’re edible and fit to just cut up with the rest of the fruit. I wouldn’t have recognized these as fruit of a plant in the same genus!
Today I found Tacacos in a supermarket (automercado). They are amazing. The boiled fruit has a very distinct and prominent scent and aroma of japanese green tea (gyokuro, sencha, …) which i found very interesting and enjoyable :) Moved from Europe to Costa Rica recently and am so excited to check out all the fruits here. Whenever I find something in a market or grocery store that I havent seen yet I always buy it and look if you have a video about it :)
When you said it smelled/tasted like lime, flowers, and cucumber and I'm now thinking a water infusion would be good. I wonder if the dryness would come through in the water.
I've actually bought/withheld myself from buying plants based on Jared's descriptions. Its a bit tougher for me since I'm in a pretty temperate climate and rare, hardy, and worthwhile plants are a tad hard to come by. But its still a pretty decent strategy when the plants are so obscure you can't get any idea of what you're getting into.
Looks like little grenades cooking! It's interesting that they have some chalkiness in them when the flavors they have seem like they'd be the opposite of that. I think you get that kind of powdery thing from raw potatoes, which might have something to do with why it's starchy after being cooked.
Hello! I am sort of new to this channel but it’s very interesting to watch! I have binged through a lot of your videos haha. I was wondering if you are allergic to any fruits? You’ve eaten so many fruits from around the world so I wondered.
I've been catching up and noticed you have a hard time cutting some fruit, to the point of possible endangerment. Have you considered purchasing a butcher block, nice cleaver and possibly a machete for these situations - or is it an active choice where you prefer showcasing the difficulties?
I just asked my boss who is from Costa Rica and he said he hates it, but then again I get the feeling he's someone who would still refuse to eat his vegetables! If you have a chance though he said arracache is delicious, more of a tuber than a fruit though.
Hey there, tico (costarican) here, I just found your channel by accident, and checked for anything on Costa Rica. Let me add some details on tacacos: in Costa Rica tacacos are NEVER eaten raw (they have "mancha", some kind of bitter tasty oil). Tacacos need a lot more cooking (they actually turn brownish when properly cooked. A common way to eat them is to add them to soups (without pealing them) specially "olla de carne" which is beef soup, cook them for at least an hour or more. Then, to eat them, you can either cut a bit at the top, and peal the hard shell. The tacaco seed teste very good too. Another thing to consider is how ripe the tacacos are, if they are very ripe use them in soups, if they are unripe, small, they can be boiled as you did and added to salads, unripe tacacos don't need peeling. The ripe tacacos are much more fibrous than unripe ones. (The ones you got were the ripe ones that require much more cooking). So, in summary, you would need to taste tacacos again :D
I’m sorry, but when you said “It’s really complicated” at 4:25, I immediately envisioned a teenage emo boy talking about his relationship with the girl he has a crush on.
I'd love to be able to try making a cream soup with these, maybe cut them into halves, throw 'em into the oven and roast them until they brown a little like a baked pumpkin... then saute some onions, throw in some herbs, throw these in and add some soy milk and blend it all up... hmm and serve it with some chili oil drizzled on top and a few thick slices of toast.
