Tamarind fruit is available in tart and sweet varieties.
Tamarind fruit is a pod with a sticky brown interior and large seeds. Its flavor ranges from sugary sweet to sour, and it is used in cooking as well as eaten as an out-of-hand fruit snack. Thai chefs use tamarind to add sweet and sour tastes to sauces, soups, salads and stir-fry dishes and, in recent years, the cuisines of Africa, Asia and the tropical Americas started incorporating tamarind into their dishes.
Growing Regions
Although tamarind thrives in many tropical climates, it is most prolific in Thailand. The trees on which the fruit pods grow have large, lacy leaves that make them popular shade trees. Bangkok's city parks are full of tamarind trees, and they are also favored as decorative foliage in Thai home gardens.
Tamarind Varieties
Sweet tamarind is sold in ripened pods and eaten fresh. It is the priciest type of tamarind and so valued that a Sweet Tamarind Fair is held each year in Petchaboon, Thailand, to celebrate it. More common types of tamarind have tarter tastes. They are eaten raw or transformed into sweet and spicy snacks when the fruit pulp is mixed with sugar, salt and crushed dried chiles. Candied tamarind is made by removing the seeds from the flesh and cooking the fruit in syrup.
Cooking with Tamarind
Tamarind juice is used in cooking more than the flesh that is eaten as fruit. If purchased in pods, the flesh is removed from the brittle pods and separated from the seeds and fibers. It is then smashed and squeezed to extract the juice. It is more commonly available already removed from the pods with the strings and seeds removed, compressed into blocks and wrapped in plastic wrap. In this state, it is easier to squeeze to produce the juice used in cooking. Breaking the tamarind blocks into pieces and mixing them with a little water aids in the juice extraction process. The thick brown juice is called tamarind water.
Other Uses
Tamarind trees also produce edible leaves and flowers, which add fresh sour tastes to dips and salads or are used to garnish spicy soups. Roasted tamarind seeds are mixed with other roasted seeds and grains, ground and used as a coffee substitute. As a home remedy for intestinal parasites, the seeds are roasted, soaked and consumed whole. Processed wet tamarind is used as a natural silver polisher by artisans who handcraft silver jewelry and bowls.
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