Fruit in Savoury Meals

lizzief79

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How do you use fruit in your savoury meals? Personally, I like to make sauces with them. I also sometimes add sultanas and chopped apple to a curry. Of course, a tomato is fruit and I include these in many dishes I make. What are some interesting and creative ways to use fruit in a savoury meal that you might not expect to work but it does?
 
I make Turkish-style pilav rice with dried tomatoes, sultanas and dried prunes. The saltiness of the rice goes extremely well with the tart sweetish taste of the sultanas and prunes.
 
I do a lot of stir frying and use a lot of fruit in it, mainly pineapple, mangoes and mandarin oranges. When I make stuffed peppers I put slightly apple or pineapple juice in the pan that I cook the peppers in. the peppers inhale the juice and add a different flavor to the stuffed peppers.
 
The French eat boudin (a kind of blood sausage) sauteed with butter, onions and green apples. Yes, the green apples actually complement the bloody taste (the boudin itself usually has been seasoned with cinnamon, salt, pepper and other spices) and the result sweet-salty blend of flavors actually works.

You have to go to a good French restaurant and order a "boudin aux pommes". Properly done, it tastes wonderful!
 
I like putting mango in my tacos. I make a mango salsa and put them in fish tacos with corn tortillas. I also like pineapple in my burgers. I sometimes smoke meat in our smoker and put an apple in there as well to give my meat an apple flavor.
 
We love cooking chicken with pineapple at home and it is one of our favorite dish. Marinate the chicken with a little salt and with the juice of pineapple tidbits in can for an hour or two to absorb its taste. You can also use fresh pineapple for this recipe. Then saute garlic, onion and the marinated chicken together with its sauce with a little fish sauce according to taste. If you have no fish sauce salt is just okay. If half cook already put the pineapple tidbits and bell pepper and continue to cook until tender. Lastly put liquid milk in small amount only just to thicken the sauce and its done. A great dish! :)
 
I usually get whole raisins or sliced pineapples in restaurants whenever I order certain dishes, and I think they mostly do it that way to show the ingredients off, but I personally prefer them to be just crushed because I don't like the texture of whole fruit in savory dishes all that much and I think it's better if the flavor was a bit more dispersed.
 
I don't do it very often because I really don't like having the sweetness in my dinners. I don't even like when a spaghetti sauce has a slight sweetness to it.

That being said, pineapple is the occasional exception. I love sweet 'n' sour pork/chicken, so I will make that occasionally. I also like pineapple on ham, so I will make a glaze for ham every so often.
 
There is a street food in Malaysia called Pineapple Fried Rice. It's white rice that has been cooked in pineapple juice rather than water and then stir fried in with curry powder,chillies, coriander, garlic, onions and then topped with cooked shrimp, squid, bits of chicken, chunks of fish and even more pineapple pieces. It is amazing! In some food stalls, it is served in a hollowed-out pineapple.
 
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