How do you peel a mangosteen, and can you eat the yellow parts inside and the pit?

Mangosteen is a fairly common fruit for us, and right now is the season for eating mangosteen, with many vendors and supermarkets selling it. The flesh is sweet, juicy and delicious. So how do you peel a mangosteen? What is the yellow stuff inside a mangosteen? Can you eat the pit in the middle of a mangosteen? Let me answer these for you one by one.

1. How do you peel a mangosteen?

1. The mangosteen rind can be squeezed by hand

After you buy fresh mangosteens, you can press the middle part with your hands; with a little force the rind will split open from the middle, revealing the white flesh inside, and then you can eat it directly.

2. Peeling a mangosteen with a knife

You can also use a knife to do the necessary work when peeling a mangosteen. The specific method is to remove the leaves at the bottom of the mangosteen; a small opening will then appear on the outer fruit, and then use the knife to cut the rind in half starting from the small opening, then pull it apart to both sides with your hands, and the mangosteen fruit will come apart easily.

3. Another way to eat mangosteen

If you find peeling mangosteens troublesome, there is another way to eat them: after removing the leaves, use a knife to cut away the rind at the bottom, exposing the flesh inside, then put the mangosteen directly into the refrigerator and chill it for one or two hours; after taking it out, scoop it out with a spoon and eat it. The taste is especially refreshing, and it also saves people the trouble of peeling.

4. Judging by appearance

Before opening the mangosteen shell, you can first remove the leaves on the mangosteen. By observing the sepals at the bottom of the mangosteen, you can tell quite well how the mangosteen will taste; the number of sepals indicates the number of segments of flesh. Generally, the more sepals there are, the more flesh the mangosteen has, and the smaller the pit, the tastier it is.

2. What is the yellow stuff inside a mangosteen?

1. Damage during picking or transport

The yellow substance on the stem of the mangosteen is a substance secreted by the fruit itself, most likely caused by damage during picking, or the fruit being damaged or squeezed during transport and the skin being scraped open, which causes that yellow sticky liquid to be secreted. This substance is not harmful to the human body at all, so there is no need to worry.

Of course, if the broken skin is exposed for too long, it will affect the freshness and taste of the mangosteen. So, if there is too much yellow substance on the stem of the mangosteen, the freshness is correspondingly reduced.

2. Unripe mangosteens will have yellow stuff

Unripe mangosteens also have yellow sap inside; it is harmless and can be eaten, though the taste is not very good. Pick up a mangosteen and weigh it in your hand to see whether it is soft or hard; if the mangosteen is soft, it is ripe, and if it is hard, it is not yet ripe. A fully ripe one has relatively soft skin, is relatively large, and has skin that is purple to the point of black; otherwise, just open it and taste it. The unripe one tastes rather astringent.

3. Left too long, the mangosteen is no longer fresh

It may also be that the mangosteen has been left for a long time, which has already caused the flesh inside to spoil. If the mangosteen you bought is not fresh enough, then that stuff, even if it is the so-called “sap”, tastes very bitter. If it tastes bitter, it cannot be eaten. At the very least, that part cannot be eaten. In some cases, if you remove the yellow part, the white part can still be eaten. But if there is yellow stuff and the shell is soft, then it has rotted, and it is best not to eat it.

3. Can you eat the pit in the middle of a mangosteen?

The components of the pit in the middle of a mangosteen are generally protein, fat, cellulose, carbohydrates, etc. Among them, cellulose such as lignin wraps up the protein, fat, carbohydrates and other components, making it very hard to digest, so eating mangosteen pits is generally not recommended.