Usually when I make things to share with y’all I take little nibbles and bites of the stuff I’m focusing on throughout the dishes and when taking photos. I’ve been excited for dragon fruit since day one and couldn’t wait to make something nice, which I believed I accomplished with the smoothie bowl. The start of this week I sliced up some of the dragon fruit to take some nice pictures of and at the end I just went for it and took a bite out of one.
Not good.
I had never spit anything out as fast as I did the bite I took. It instantly turned to mush in my mouth and I think it was just the fact that there is no flavor. It is faintly sweet but almost like an old wet towel kind of taste. I have never eaten an old wet towel but dragon fruit is what I imagine it tastes like. How disappointed do you think I was to start the week off with that bite? The answer is incredibly disappointed.
Imagine my surprise when I made the smoothie bowl though and it tasted awesome. It was strong on the banana, but there was something different there that wasn’t any of the other ingredients that had to be the dragon fruit. It also has a different consistency that is probably perfect for smoothies. That may be the reason I don’t see it much in recipes eaten raw. When I do, it is mainly the white variety instead of the red.
Fun fact time, I actually bought out all the dragon fruit at the four closest grocery stores around me. There were only three at one store but I checked the other three to see if they had any fresher kinds. None. I had to be resourceful with what I already had. At $5.98 each these aren’t exactly eating on a budget friendly, but this was in the name of fruit research.
Yesterday I ventured forth once more to try and find some fresher fruits and got my hands on two of them. I chose a small one and one that was more vivid in color to see if there is any difference.
Not really much a difference.
I will admit the fresher one was a bit easier to eat and reminded me more of a berry flavor, but I could never remember what berry I had in mind. The texture was still super soft, but I could actually chew on it instead of it just melting from the get go.
It is still confusing to me that these look like they would be this super sweet tropical fruit like a mix between mango and strawberry, but they are really just bland. Every food blogger must be really trying hard to sell these to their readers because they look pretty on the page, but not so tasty in the belly.
Try 52 