What is this "miracle berry" you speak of? And why should I care?
(What's with all the questions?
Oh no! Another question!
Yikes!)
Answer is: I don't know and you can too!
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| Let's do this! |
Actually a miracle fruit, or synsepalum dulcificum, is a berry that grows fairly wild in West Africa and when consumed makes sour foods taste sweet and vice versa and so on.
This interesting 'lil phenomenon has caught on so much that people started making and selling tablets so you can experience the flavor fun in the comfort of your own home. Or kitchen. Or prison toilet. Its up to you!
Hearing about this, we here at the Homeskillet just had to get in on that action. We just had to. It's...it's what we do.
So we purchased some tablets online, went to the farmers market to get some super fresh produce, went home and, well....here are the results.
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| Flavor Tripping, and it looks like a ticket...get it? |
A Packet of 10 tablets set us back like $12. There are more expensive options but we are absolute cheapskates and there you go with that.
The tablets themselves are pretty tiny, like a ruddy red/brown color and are made to dissolve on your tongue in a few minutes before you do the taste test.
The tablets kind of had this bitter flavor at first, but when they started to dissolve it took on a washed out cherry flavor or like a really bland Kool Aide. Drink actually. Purple drink. Yes. That's what it tasted like.
Took almost 15 minutes to evaporate and coat the tongue and once it was gone we went to the kitchen to see, and taste, for ourselves.
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| Farm fresh produce about to get tongue twisted |
The grapefruit we got comes from this guy that only sells them at the St. Phillips Plaza farmers market and they grow in what he calls an 'ancient orchard', like trees that have been giving fruit for hundreds of years. Yeah. Very cool. These things are super potent and very tart but extremely delicious (that is if you like grapefruit, as we do).
Biting into one yielded a reaction of "Okay". Nothing mind blowing but, I guess, it did taste a little sweeter. I guess. But not really. We were expecting a "Oh wow!" moment eating grapefruit right after the tablet coated the tongue. It was fine I suppose.
The best part came with the limes and lemons we got from a local farm. Yes, these guys did taste sweet which was very cool. Almost like candy. We devoured so much citrus that we are now completely free of scurvy for at least a few generations.
The worst part was the strawberries. Maybe it was because we consumed a good amount of tart and sour fruit but the strawberries tasted like dirt. Very strange. The strawberries came from the same farm as the limes and lemons; they were fresh and very good but, man, that musty flavor was just really disappointing. And weird.
It was time to taste some other things!
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| Hot pickles goin' down |
A good friend makes his own bread and butter pickles and he does them up nice and spicy. Its like part cucumber, part onion and part jalapeno in the brine. Yum.
The miracle berry didn't help with the heat but the flavor of the pickles and jalapenos were sort of sweetened a bit. Not by much though. So far this whole experiment was one big shoulder shrug.
Lets do something super spicy now!
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| And now for the big boy stuff |
Tucson native Daniel Kinn has his own line of hot sauces that he makes at home called Heat Stroke. His spiciest has to be the ghost pepper variety. Oh man does it pack a whallop. We put some on our fingers and then on our tongues.
Yep. Hot. As. Fxxk. But all the miracle berry tablet did was make his hot sauce taste muddy. That was a let down. Then we went back to the fruit and due to all of the various flavors and textures going on, and probably because the stuff was wearing off, everything just tasted like themselves again.
Huh.
$12 eh?
Wonder what the more expensive stuff would do? Maybe we'll get into that later. Maybe...
Final thought: It was kinda cool.
Perhaps next time we'll consume two tablets. I don't know. They just didn't do all that much. The lemon and lime was interesting but all the rest? Meh. Unfortunately we didn't have ice cream or a lot of sweets on hand so we might follow up with that.
Stay tuned.
And there you have it.
Cheers!
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| Welp...that was a thing |
Camera, Typing and Still Not Fully Convinced (But Kind of Impressed)
"Metal" Mark Whittaker
First Week of May, 2018
Metal Influence:
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