Monstera Deliciosa Tasting Notes

[Coconut Cream]

People in New Jersey are growing Monstera Deliciosa as a house plant right now, but it also makes tropical fruit. Who knew? According to the internet, Monstera sells for premium prices of $30 or more by mail order. In real life, you can also buy them at Excalibur fruit trees for about five bucks a piece. You can probably also find them in piles of landscaping waste by the side of the road, thrown out by people who don't even know their ornamental vine makes fruit. Thanks to a buddy who stopped by Excalibur to pick up some of these fruits for me, I can bring you my Monstera Deliciosa tasting notes.

General: The fruit resembles a super jumbo ear of corn, covered in green dragon scales and should be plastered with warning labels.

WARNING #1: Full of sharp crystals that will stab your esophagus. Make sure it's totally ripe or it's really painful to eat. When fully ripe, it's only moderately painful.

WARNING #2: “Some folks” find the name difficult to say and fudge it by muttering alternate names like Mozzarella DeLorean or Minnesota DellaRosa. Just get the first letters right and wait for the internet to correct your pronunciation.



Texture: Imagine a can of mushy corn niblets packed in a slimy thick syrup. Then imagine your mouth and throat feeling irritated for 6 hours after eating a spoon of that corn.

Sweetness: Intensely sweet in a most delicious way.

Flavor: Wow! I'm tasting an utterly delicious mix of pineapple and jackfruit. How can something so devilishly frustrating taste so good? Sweet, wild, unconventional and really fun until the pain hits. Eating Monstera Deliciosa feels a lot like kissing a woman you know will break your heart.

Rating: I love the taste and I am extremely grateful for the chance to try this oddity. If you can harvest some Monstera from a neighbor's plant, or get a few pieces cheap, then it's worth trying once or twice. Don't pay crazy money for it – one fruit yields less than a cereal bowl of niblets over the course of two weeks. Beyond that, there are way too many drawbacks to plant or even consistently eat this fruit. Including but not limited to:

• Monstera grows into a massive, invasive vine that will take over your trees.
• The fruit ripens slowly, exposing about one or two tablespoons of edible niblets per day. It's a lot of fuss over very little fruit.
• One fruit can take up to a week or more to finish eating as you wait for it to gradually ripen.
• Mold and rot can damage the fruit while you wait.
• The fruit looks dirty, with black particles (seeds? mold? dirt?) all over the part you eat and everywhere else.
• Slimy texture.
• Even when fully ripe, it still caused me mouth and throat irritation.
• Why not just make a smoothie or sorbet out of some pineapple, banana and jackfruit to approximate the flavor and skip the rest of the aggravation?

[Epiphyte]

maybe it's your photo, but your fruit looks ripened prematurely, which would explain the pain.  for comparison, here's a pic of my thai constellation monstera deliciosa that i pollinated with pollen from the albo monstera...



no pain, at most a bit of discomfort from the black bits.  pretty sure this fruit tasted noticeably better than the fruit that i didn't pollinate, and which didn't contain any seeds.  in case anyone is interested, here were the seedlings. 

[brian]

Thanks for the report!  I have always wanted to try this fruit.  I grew one quite large but it never fruited so I tossed it because I was out of space.  There is an exotic plant nursery with a large greenhouse that has these fruiting, I keep meaning to ask the staff if they'll sell me a fruit. 

The photos I remember seeing of the fruits, the flesh color was more yellow/orange than white?  I agree yours looks underripe but of course I have no first hand experience with it.

"Imagine a can of mushy corn niblets packed in a slimy thick syrup" - this is not an appetizing description, but I still want to try it

[Amel]

When I saw that Guac Farm sells a piece for $20 I almost fell out of my chair

[Coconut Cream]

It's definitely possible. The photos show some white kernels, but I learned pretty quickly to let the fruit turn a golden color where it was almost falling off the stalk before eating it. No matter how long I waited, I still felt some discomfort. I ended up waited until it was starting to rot. But definitely don't try to eat it before it turns yellow.

[gardenGnostic]

for comparison, here's a pic of my thai constellation monstera deliciosa that i pollinated with pollen from the albo monstera...

Thai con is a large form right? I think they're supposed to have better fruit than the more common small forms, but I could be misremembering. Maybe OP has that one?

[Jaboticaba45]

Can never enjoy these because there’s always one spiked thing no matter what
Even if I let it ripen all the way🧱
The taste is pretty good though I like it
But not enjoyable

[Galatians522]

Having suffers similar experiences from eating under-ripe monstera and undercooked taro leaves, I am fairly certain that the Oxalate needles in monstera can be neutralized by cooking. I have not tried it yet, but it works in theory. 😂

[fishie]

People in New Jersey are growing Monstera Deliciosa as a house plant right now, but it also makes tropical fruit. Who knew? According to the internet, Monstera sells for premium prices of $30 or more by mail order. In real life, you can also buy them at Excalibur fruit trees for about five bucks a piece. You can probably also find them in piles of landscaping waste by the side of the road, thrown out by people who don't even know their ornamental vine makes fruit. Thanks to a buddy who stopped by Excalibur to pick up some of these fruits for me, I can bring you my Monstera Deliciosa tasting notes.

General: The fruit resembles a super jumbo ear of corn, covered in green dragon scales and should be plastered with warning labels.

WARNING #1: Full of sharp crystals that will stab your esophagus. Make sure it's totally ripe or it's really painful to eat. When fully ripe, it's only moderately painful.

WARNING #2: “Some folks” find the name difficult to say and fudge it by muttering alternate names like Mozzarella DeLorean or Minnesota DellaRosa. Just get the first letters right and wait for the internet to correct your pronunciation.



Texture: Imagine a can of mushy corn niblets packed in a slimy thick syrup. Then imagine your mouth and throat feeling irritated for 6 hours after eating a spoon of that corn.

Sweetness: Intensely sweet in a most delicious way.

Flavor: Wow! I'm tasting an utterly delicious mix of pineapple and jackfruit. How can something so devilishly frustrating taste so good? Sweet, wild, unconventional and really fun until the pain hits. Eating Monstera Deliciosa feels a lot like kissing a woman you know will break your heart.

Rating: I love the taste and I am extremely grateful for the chance to try this oddity. If you can harvest some Monstera from a neighbor's plant, or get a few pieces cheap, then it's worth trying once or twice. Don't pay crazy money for it – one fruit yields less than a cereal bowl of niblets over the course of two weeks. Beyond that, there are way too many drawbacks to plant or even consistently eat this fruit. Including but not limited to:

• Monstera grows into a massive, invasive vine that will take over your trees.
• The fruit ripens slowly, exposing about one or two tablespoons of edible niblets per day. It's a lot of fuss over very little fruit.
• One fruit can take up to a week or more to finish eating as you wait for it to gradually ripen.
• Mold and rot can damage the fruit while you wait.
• The fruit looks dirty, with black particles (seeds? mold? dirt?) all over the part you eat and everywhere else.
• Slimy texture.
• Even when fully ripe, it still caused me mouth and throat irritation.
• Why not just make a smoothie or sorbet out of some pineapple, banana and jackfruit to approximate the flavor and skip the rest of the aggravation?

Thanks for the review. This is one that I want to try. I see them growing at Lego Land and am tempted to grab one over the fence lol.

maybe it's your photo, but your fruit looks ripened prematurely, which would explain the pain.  for comparison, here's a pic of my thai constellation monstera deliciosa that i pollinated with pollen from the albo monstera...



no pain, at most a bit of discomfort from the black bits.  pretty sure this fruit tasted noticeably better than the fruit that i didn't pollinate, and which didn't contain any seeds.  in case anyone is interested, here were the seedlings.

What do your seedlings look like now? Very cool results, btw.

[Ermes]

Hi, I harvest them when the scales covering them begin to lift and peel off. At that point, the flesh is yellowish, very fragrant, and has an extraordinary pineapple/banana flavor. The real difficulty is that it takes a lot of patience to remove all those black oxalate flakes, which are really annoying if ingested.

[Daintree]

I have these in my greenhouse, both the plain and variegated type. And I concur that your fruit looks under-ripe. I wait until the scales fall off naturally, and then you have to make sure you get all the black specks out. Putting them in a paper bag helps speed things up.  I harvest a fruit once I see that the scales have started to separate, which starts at the stem end and progresses over a few days to the pointy end. Then bag them and eat the kernels only after the outer scales have fallen from that area.  So I may have a few going at once, half eaten.
They are fun!