Just like fruits, jackfruit’s seeds are edible and are nutritious. When boiled these seeds taste like boiled potatoes. It is rich in iron, contains Vitamin A, rich in protein. Seeds are useful in skin rejuvenation, hair growth, for anemia, to build strength and is aphrodisiac too! During season, seeds can be collected, dried and stored for non-seasonal uses. Jackfruit seeds can be used for preparing varieties of dishes including sambar, curry varieties, stir fry, korma, fritters and sweets like laddu and sweet momos.

Dried Jackfruit seed rasam tastes good and one can have it with rice or like soup for winter, cold weather.

Ingredients:

1. Jackfruit seeds – 15
2. Green chilies- 2
3. Rasam powder – 3 tsp
4. Tamarind – small lemon size
5. Turmeric – 1/2 tsp
6. Coconut – ¼ cup
7. Asafetida- pinch
8. Curry leaves – few
9. Red chillie- 1
10. Cumin seeds -1 tsp
11. Mustard -1/2 tsp
12. Clarified butter -2 tsp

Preparation:

1. Peel the outer white skin and soak jackfruit seeds for few hours in hot water and transfer soaked seeds to pressure cooker. Add one cup fresh water and pressure cook seeds for about 5 whistles. Seeds should be soft after cooking. Remove outer brown skin of cooked seeds and transfer cooked seeds to a grinder.
2. Soak tamarind in a cup of hot water for about ten minutes and extract tamarind juice.
3. Prepare paste of jackfruit seeds by adding little water and transfer the paste to a cooking vessel.
4. To jackfruit seed paste add two cups water (use soaked jackfruit water), salt, turmeric powder and mix. Slit green chili and add to it.
5. Grind coconut with rasam powder by adding little water . Grind it to a fine paste.
6. Place the above mix on medium heat. Add grinded coconut-rasam powder paste, tamarind juice and mix well. Adjust salt level based on your taste.
7. Prepare seasoning using clarified butter (ghee). Add cumin, mustard, curry leaves followed by asafetida.
8. Add seasoning to boiling rasam. Let it boil one more minute.
9. Remove rasam from the stove and serve hot with rice or one can have this rasam as soup.

Image credit: http://rasam.co.in/