Slidin' into the Cookout
the only way to eat jackfruit
This week’s recipe is my current favorite entrée-type food to serve as part of a cookout spread: BBQ Jackfruit Sliders. They are great for crowds full of less adventurous eaters, kids, or people who would generally turn their noses up at anything covered in barbeque sauce that wasn’t meat. They’re delicious and this recipe makes enough for a party without a huge amount of effort. Sure you could serve them as BBQ sandwiches instead of sliders to make a meal of it but I’ll leave that choice up to you. I chose sliders. If you guys love this recipe, you’re gonna lose your shit when you try our BBQ Mango Jackfruit Sammie recipe when our new book Hungry as Hell drops this October. Similar concept but with an amazing homemade sauce that every mango lover should try.
A few things you should know about jackfruit if this is your first-time cooking with it. While you can occasionally find fresh jackfruit in some grocery stores, that’s not what we are using here. You want to buy unripe or young jackfruit canned in water or brine, not syrup. You can find this in lots of grocery stores now stocked near the coconut milk or, weirdly, near the canned fruits and pumpkin at the store. Trader Joe’s has jackfruit stocked in cans year-round. Inside the cans, you’ll find big chunks of jackfruit floating around in a watery brine. When you are ready to get cooking, drain the jackfruit in a colander and rinse the chunks off with cool water. Place the rinsed jackfruit on your cutting board and with the broad side of your knife, press down on the chunks of jackfruit so that they split apart. Then rough chop them and remove any of the hard seeds you see. They’ll be obvious so don’t stress. Now your jackfruit is ready for use.
This recipe calls for store-bought BBQ sauce to save you some time. Just grab whatever you love. I like the sliders topped with our celery seed slaw, extra bbq, some thinly sliced onion, and some dill pickles. If you’ve got the funds, Grillo’s Pickles are my personal favorite because they are superior to any store-bought dill pickle I’ve ever found (not an ad, just a fan). But no matter how you dress them, the jackfruit is the star. Any leftover jackfruit goes great on nachos with our Tex-Mex Queso or wrapped up in a burrito with all the fixings. You can’t go wrong.
BBQ Jackfruit Sliders
Makes 18 sliders or 6 individual sammies
1 tablespoon avocado or olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
8 cups chopped, unripe or young jackfruit (approximately four 14 ounce cans, drained and rinsed)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons Braggs Liquid Aminos or soy sauce
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon your favorite no-salt all-purpose seasoning
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 ¼ cup your favorite barbeque sauce, plus more for serving
Spray oil
To serve: buns, bbq sauce, sliced red onions, your favorite coleslaw like our celery seed slaw, and pickle slices
Heat a large oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and the onion, and sauté till the onion is golden, about 8 minutes. Add the chopped jackfruit and stir until it begins to stick to the pan, 3 to 5 minutes. While the jackfruit cooks, mix the tomato paste, Braggs, and liquid smoke together in a small glass until there aren’t a bunch of tomato paste chunks floating around in there. Don’t be sloppy now, you’re so close to being done. Drizzle the tomato paste mixture over the jackfruit and toss it all around so it’s incorporated into the jackfruit. Sprinkle over the all-purpose seasoning, paprika, and garlic and cook for another 3 minutes so that all the flavors get a chance to work into the jackfruit. If there starts to be lots of burnt bits at the bottom of the pan, add some water a tablespoon at a time to help you scrape that shit up. You want that flavor. Add the barbeque sauce to the pan and cook for another 2 minutes so that all that jackfruit gets covered in sauce and everything gets a chance to warm back up.
Once that is done, turn off the heat and turn your broiler up to high. Spray some oil over the top of the jackfruit and stick it under the broiler for up to 5 minutes until the jackfruit starts to look a little burnt in some spots. See the above video to see how it should look. Take it out, stir, and repeat the process at least 2 more times to get some good burnt parts on the jackfruit. This is annoying but totally fucking worth it. It makes the jackfruit have a much deeper and more savory taste. It’s basically the secret to the whole thing.
Serve warm or at room temperature on buns slathered with extra BBQ sauce, topped with sliced red onions, your favorite slaw, and some dill pickles slices.
Thanks so much for joining us here in The Broiler Room. Hopefully you guys are enjoying all this summer cookout food as much as I am. If you’ve cooked with jackfruit before, I’d love to hear your favorite ways to serve it in the comments!
Thanks so much for adding all the info about jackfruit for rookies. I’ve been hesitant to try the jf recipes because of, well, ignorance. No longer.
I pretty much only use jackfruit for “pulled pork” type recipes, but try a pulled jackfruit pizza. 🤤 I like to cook the jackfruit in a dry rub, then for the pizza a bbq sauce base and the jackfruit, cook it, then add a coleslaw on top after it’s cooked.