Colombian Fruit Series: Guanábana

This installment of the Colombian Fruit Series is the Guanábana, or Soursop. I have been waiting ever since we got here to pick one of these things up. The first time I had one, it was a very different experience for me!  It's packed with vitamins, and research shows that it may have cancer fighting properties (statement not approved by FDA). It's very hard to describe how this fruit tastes, but the taste is as unique as it looks. 

Average size Guanábana (Hand inserted for size comparison). Some look cooler than others with bigger spikes on the outside.

Wikipedia gives an excellent description of the taste: "a combination of strawberry and pineapple, with sour citrus flavor notes contrasting with an underlying creamy flavor reminiscent of coconut or banana." It really is all of those flavors put together. I think I found a bag of Guanábana juice at Publix in Florida one time in the frozen ethnic section (Goya packages it). I highly recommend going to pick some up and making some juice, or a cocktail out of it ;-). We bought this from the Minorista today (more on that place to follow), and it cost us about $6,500 Colombian Pesos, or about $3.50 USD.

 Here's what to expect when you crack one of these bad boys open....

Brace yourself for action! They're actually pretty easy to cut open. The outside skin is sort of leathery. 

Aaaand here's the first look at the inside. Braaaaaains! It looks almost alien on the inside. The seeds are pretty organized throughout the inside. I wonder how the Golden Ratio ties in to this fruit.

Sometimes you can just buy the fruit from a store like this pre-cut in to quarters, or in a bag already juiced.

In this case, we are going to juice it, so we cut off the outside skin. 

On the inside, there are individual pods that are pretty easily separated. 

If you're looking to just eat the stuff animal style, you can simply pick these pods out and eat them!

Just another shot of the seed pods. You eat the outside and spit out the seed. Yes they are slimy, so you can use a spoon instead of your hands to eat them unless you  don't care if things get messy.

The pods separate quite easily from each other. Here's a lineup of some pods with one of the seeds.

This is how you will feel when you try this delicious fruit! 

The Guanábana that we bought was about average sized, and there is a LOT of fruit to go around.