Our list of weird berries you need to try: they’re nothing like strawberries or raspberries!
Berries are some of the healthiest fruits around. Not only are they loaded with vitamins and fiber, but they’re also one of the best sources of antioxidants on the planet. Raspberries, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, Acai berries, Goji berries, they’re all as nutritious as they are delicious.
But here are a few weird berries you’ve probably never heard of before:
- Mammee Apple — It may be called an “apple”, but it’s actually a berry. It is native to South America, but has long been found in Southeast Asia and West Africa. A thick outer rind protects yellow or orange pulp on the inside, with between 1 and 4 large seeds on the inside. It has a sweet, rich flavor that makes it a delight to eat.
- Cocona fruit –– This tropical fruit grows on a small shrub found in the mountain areas of South America. It takes less than 9 months to grow from seed to fruit, and the fruit takes about 2 months to ripen. It is either yellow, orange, or red, and looks a lot like a tomato. Its flavor is somewhere between a tomato and a lemon–an odd taste, but one that is surprisingly enjoyable!
- Breadfruit –– The breadfruit tree is in the same family as the mulberry tree, making it berry-adjacent. It is found in most of the islands of Southeast Asia, as well as the Philippines. When the fruit is ripe, it can be eaten raw, or it is often cooked when still unripe. It has soft, sweet flesh when ripe, and when it is cooked, it has a flavor reminiscent of bread fresh out of the oven–hence its name.
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- Rambutan –– It may look like a hair strawberry, but the flavor is so much more exotic and wonderful! It is a single-seeded berry that is protected by the hairy skin, which takes work to peel away. But once you peel it, you find that it’s one of the most delicious berries around.
- Noni –– Also known as the Indian mulberry, the noni fruit is native to Australasia and Southeast Asia. It is called the cheese fruit or vomit fruit due to the fact that it releases a pungent odor when it is ripening, but the flavor is not as strong as the smell. It’s often cooked or added to stews and soups, and it’s an excellent source of Vitamin A, fiber, and a wide range of minerals.
- Salmonberry –– This fruit is found along western North American coastline, from California all the way north to Alaska. They look like little raspberries or mulberries, but they tend to be orange more often than red. They are much sweeter than raspberries, with a flavor reminiscent of mulberries.
- Miracle Fruit –-This berry, native to Western Africa, is rich in a sugar called miraculin. Miraculin combines with a glycoprotein and binds to your tongue, and it has a strange effect on your taste buds. For an hour or so after eating miracle fruit, everything you eat–even sour lemons–will taste sweet. It’s believed that miraculin distorts the shape of the sweetness receptors in your taste buds, and thereby everything that the tastebuds detect seems sweet. There was even a failed attempt to commercialize the fruit back in the 1970s, thanks to its miraculous effects. The attempt failed and few people remember miracle fruit. Only recently has it become popular once again. Definitely an awesome berry to try at least once!
