Savour these special Jackfruit Papads made with pickled jackfruit avrils.
Why have tasty jackfruit papads become scarce?
It's a multifactorial problem.
- Difficulty: Preparation of jackfruit papads is extremely laborious, requiring extensive patience.
- Expense: The monetary value of time spent making jackfruit papads is extremely high, when compared to simply slicing the avrils and selling to chips manufacturers.
- Skill: Although there are many people who prepare jackfruit papads, only few of those have a grip on making it tap into your taste buds.
- Migration of Youngsters: Children of most of the village producers have found some other source of income (such as job, business, self-employment etc.) in the cities, and they are not into the production.
We define it as "while the previous generations were producers, this generation has become consumers." - Weather shift: In the last couple of years, we have all been seeing a forward shift in weather seasons. Due to this, the delay in maturity of jackfruit, and the rainy weather conditions during maturity together have created an unsupportive condition to prepare jackfruit papads. Those who are still into production don't get jackfruit during sunny days.
- Adulteration: While industrialization improves productivity, this also requires a lot of raw material as input. To keep the machine running throughout the year, especially during the non-season, it has become a common industry practice to use Tapioca for the preparation of papads and sell them as Jackfruit Papads. Because tapioca papads and jackfruit papads both look alike, it's more difficult for consumers to distinguish before buying.
So what's the solution?
There is definitely a traditional way, in which rural people have been enjoying freshly made jackfruit products—including jackfruit papads—throughout the year. Just like any other fruit, jackfruit avrils are preserved in salt during the rainy season. When the sun shines, the preserved avrils are taken out of salt water and papads are prepared with them.
Does this process affect the taste and flavour of Jackfruit?
Yes, it does alter the taste and flavour of the avrils. Hence the taste and flavour of jackfruit Papads made with these avrils will be different from the regular ones.
These non-seasonal jackfruit papads are made this way.
