Okay, so maybe you’ve read my article about loquats, and you went out and picked yourself a big basket of them. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a tree with sweet fruit that you can eat fresh. Maybe you aren’t, and you’ve got a lot of sour fruit on your hands. Either way, you can only eat so much fruit! I’m going to show you how to process the loquats so that you can use them to cook with.
There isn’t a whole lot of information out there on how exactly to process loquats, so I’ve had to figure out a lot of this on my own. Alright, here we go!
First thing you want to do is make a longitudinal around the loquat, from the stem to the blossom end. Don’t cut around the ‘equator,’ you’ll see why in a minute.
Now you can just give the fruit a little twist, and tah-dah! Now you can see the big seeds inside.
Scoop out the seeds! Careful with those seeds; just like related fruits like apples and cherries, loquat seeds contain cyanide!
Okay, were almost there! This last step is technically kind of optional? What I do is I just pinch off the little black part on the end of the fruit. This is where the flower originally was. Now repeat until you have enough loquats for your recipe! You’ll figure out a rhythm and be down before you know it.
Oh and I almost forgot! Loquats start to oxidize (turn brown) almost immediately, so you’re going to want to toss them with lemon juice, or, alternately put them in a big bowl of water with a nice splash of lemon juice in it. I prefer the latter method.
And you’re done! You’re ready to use your loquats in jellies, pies, and whatever else your little heart desires. Oh, one more thing though.
I briefly mentioned in my last article that loquats have a skin on them that can be a little tough. It’s really not too big a deal, but if it bothers you then you can remove it with a process called blanching.
Give you loquats a quick bath in a big pot of boiling water. They only need about 15-30 seconds. Don’t overload your pot because you’ll bring the temperature down too much and by the time it returns to a boil your loquats will be pretty much cooked all the way through. The idea is that only the exterior gets cooked.
Evacuate your loquats to an ice bath (a big bowl of water and ice).
After they’ve cooled down, the skin will slip right off. Now you can just proceed with taking out the seeds as shown above. Be aware that even after they’ve been blanched, they will still turn brown so keep that lemon juice handy! By the time I got around to taking this picture they had already started.
Well, there you have it. I hope I’ve created a comprehensive guide to processing loquats! Next time I’ll show you how to make loquat marmalade.
