Comments on: Don't try this at home

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:10:26 +0000

What a great fruit, I am eating one right now and it's one of my favourites. I tried it for the first time a few days ago when I arrived in Bali. The flavour is unusual - a bit like pineapple, passion fruit and chocolate!!!
I live in Australia - that's quite near Bali, yet I have never seen it for sale at home. It's a must try fruit.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 01:42:31 +0000

I have eaten salak in Cambodia (where it is called lakham) and the flesh did not look like that in your photo. The flesh is a beautiful pale salmon color. First time I tasted it, I thought it was the most delicious fruit I had ever eaten - extremely subtle too. It was not firm, but had a bit of bite to it and a very tangy sour/sweet flavor. I was told by many Cambodians that people either love them or hate them, not because they taste odd but because of the fairly intense sourness. I can't get enough of them over there, and I also love mangosteen. My husband on the other hand, did not like the salak because he noticed an underlying fishy smell (they were not as fresh at that point either....). I hope you have had a chance to taste a perfectly ripe one and have changed your opinion on this lovely fruit!

By: Tibz

Tibz — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 05:31:31 +0000

Funny.. I live in Malaysia but I've never had Salak before, even though it's native and I've heard of it.

I must say, though, that durian is very much polarizing. I like them because of the creamy texture of the fruit, but I do not like the way the smell clings to my hands for hours afterwards, no matter how many times I wash them.

By: Jan

Jan — Sun, 23 May 2010 15:42:50 +0000

That may be a different type of snake fruit or something. I had the fruit in Bali and it tasted like a Rome apple. It had a seed in the middle and the flesh was white, not that rotten gray color in your photo. Please look up snake fruit on Ebay. It has a photo of what I ate...you may have an inedible version...BTW- if you think what you had was awful, the durian fruit is ten times worse...It looks like a football with spikes. Even with a mangosteen chaser(good tasking fruit) it was still stuck in my tastebuds for 1/2 a day.. :P

By: Jenny Nilsson

Jenny Nilsson — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:03:51 +0000

I buy them from local South East Asian food stores in Sweden, where one can place an order and they pick it up at the airport the next week along with their other goods.
Personally, I would say they taste a lot like passion fruit, if one can think past the difference in texture.

The seeds always grow. I plant them in sphagnum moss cause then I can lift the moss and look at their progress. Also, planting in sphagnum might keep the seeds from rotting because of its ability to prevent some bacterial and fungal growth. Places that sell orchids usually sell dried sphagnum.

Last time the food store already had some salaks in store, which I bought. They tasted vile. I then read somewhere that salaks can start fermenting if stored too long in normal room temperature.
They still looked pretty normal though. Opaque and all, but with some brown parts. It's true they have an "interesting" flavour, but when they've gone bad the off-flavour of fermentation is recognisable by anyone.

With the risk of getting bad ones being so high, its no wonder so many people think they dislike it.

Any food store, regardless of country, that sells SE-Asian fresh fruit and vegetables should be able to order salaks for you ppl who want seeds.

By: spitfire

spitfire — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:10:47 +0000

Definitely an over-ripe, if not rotten specimen, in the photo. The snake fruit (salak) I ate in Bali was wonderful. It had a subtle pear-apple flavor, but very firm and crunchy.