Post #407029 by The Gnomon on Wed, Sep 10, 2008 8:10 AM

On 2008-09-08 15:11, MadDogMike wrote:
Gnomon, I picked up some of the frozen passion fruit pulp a while back at my local hispanic food market. What's the best use for it?

Homemade passion fruit syrup mainly.

On the labor intensive end, you can strain it to separate the juice from the pulp. On the opposite end, you can just leave all the pulp mixed in with the juice. The latter is effortless and tastes essentially the same. It's main drawback is that it clouds up otherwise clear drinks. When you make your own PF syrup you can control how sweet you make it.

I also like to dump the thawed pulp directly into drinks for flavor and tartness. Most passion fruit "juice," nectar or drink you buy in the store is heavily pre-sweetened and usually with pear juice added to it. Unadulterated PF juice is really tart. The Goya pulp is unadulterated.

My favorite storebought PF syrup is Aunty Lilikoi, but sometimes that makes a drink sweeter than I want. Occasionally we get fresh passion fruits in the stores here. No rhyme or reason. They just show up, then vanish as quickly. I buy them all up as soon as I see them (they never get more than a dozen it seems). The fresh PF has the best pulp, of course, but the Goya frozen is better overall for other reasons: 1) fresh is expensive and Goya frozen is not, 2) the frozen is pretty darn close in flavor to the fresh, 3) the supply of Goya is pretty steady, and 4) with Goya you don't have to wait for the fruits to ripen, then go through the mess of cleaning out the seeds and scooping out the pulp.

On 2008-09-08 12:35, Swanky wrote:
Certainly your methods are making a tastier, more natural mixer, but that does not mean that is what is called for in a recipe to make it properly. If that were the case, not many places have ever made these drinks properly or do so today.

And certainly your drinks may be better than those made with a can of nectar off the shelf, but they also may not be recognizable by Donn or The Bum, as the recipe they invented or remastered.

I don't think anyone should not bother making a recipe because they have Goya or Looza mango nectar in the fridge instead of hand squeezed mango juice. The recipes The Bum makes call for Mango Nectar and not fresh squeezed mango juice.

I'm a cocktail pragmatist. Do the best with what you have and make it work. For main ingredients like lime juice, fresh is doable. For a rarely used ingredient like mango nectar, I'll take the expedient and more reasonable approach.

I'd also gladly enjoy your efforts any day of the week.

I make potions.

Anyway, I had to end my previous post abruptly as I was interrupted by the inconvenience of work.

After I got through my usual "make-your-own-if-you-can" soap box I got snagged away and never got around to answering the question about the best mango nectar.

I haven't tried them all because I'm not into nectars per se as long as there is fresh or Goya pulp available. But among the ones in our mainstream supermarkets, there are three popular brands other than Goya ('nectar' in a can; or 'drink' in a bottle): Jumex, Mira, and Mi Casa.

Jumex has the highest juice content among the three (30%), but tastes the least like mango juice. It also is sweetend with HFCS.

Mira has 25% juice and has somewhat of a mango flavor, but it has a "slimy" consistency and a very "canned" taste.

The best among them is Mi Casa. With only 23% juice it actually tastes more like fresh mango juice than the others; plus, it's the cheapest at 99¢.

Unfortunately, the only flavors of the Mi Casa brand I've found around here that I'd use are mango and guava. The guava, similarly, tastes like guava and has bits of guava grit in it.

...freakin spelling...

[ Edited by: The Gnomon 2008-09-10 08:35 ]