Vegan pulled pork style jackfruit burger

Ever since I made pickled cucumber and homemade vegan barbecue sauce, I am hoping and wondering every weekend when one of my lovely friends will have a barbecue… WHEN????!!!!!!! My flat doesn’t have a balcony or garden, so I am relying on others….. Any invites?

Meanwhile, I really couldn’t wait to try my cucumber and sauce, so I decided to make a pulled jackfruit burger for now, to cure my barbecue and burger craving.

If you are not familiar with jackfruit or never tried one in your life, it is a pineapple-like fruit from South and Southeast Asia.

A ripe jackfruit is yellow and tastes like a cross between a mango and pineapple. But young jackfruit is mostly tasteless with a very unique meat-like texture that you can shred and cook with sauce. And because it is quite tasteless (a bit like young bamboo shoots), it will absorb the taste of whatever sauce you cook it with. It is widely served as a meat alternative and it is surprisingly delicious. It’s not really meaty, but it not fruity either.

You can generally find canned jackfruit in Asian grocery shops (or on Amazon). They come in 2 states, ripe in syrup or green in brine. Very important, for most cooked and pulled jackfruit recipes you MUST use the green one in brine.

Rinse the jackfruit and then drain out any excess water through a sieve before chopping roughly.

Heat the oil in a large, non-stick frying pan, add the minced garlic and fry for 2-3 minutes until the garlic turns slightly golden in colour. Add the onion and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Add in the chopped jackfruit and water, reduce the heat to medium, cover with the lid and allow to simmer until all the water is evaporated. This should take about 5 minutes.

Now the fun part starts. Use a potato masher and mash the jackfruit until it all falls apart. You may also use a fork to “pull” it like with pulled pork.

Add 2 tbsp barbecue sauce and salt, mix well for another 7-8 minutes.

It should be a bit brown, dry and curled up at the edge. Some of the thinner strands may also be a tiny bit burnt which is fine.

Turn off the heat and add 2 more tbsp barbecue sauce, mix well so all the jackfruit is well cooked and saucy.

Serve it on a burger bun with pickled cucumbers, tomato, avocado and green salad leaves. Enjoy!

I didn’t invent this pulled jackfruit idea by myself. Pulled jackfruit has gone viral on the internet in the last one or two years. So I can’t really take credit for this genius idea but this recipe is how I like to cook my pulled jackfruit.

I constructed my burger with my own pickled cucumber and homemade vegan barbecue sauce. However, as usual, for extra speedy cooking you can totally create the same dish with ready-made pickle and sauce. It’s bound to taste delicious either way.

This pulled jackfruit also goes well with sandwiches, rice, noodles, tacos, pizzas and baos.

If you have followed and made this recipe, let me know! Leave a comment and take a picture, tagging it with #k33_kitchen and share it on Instagram! I’d be very excited to see what you come up with. Cheers, hope you enjoy my recipes!