Turn Unripe Mango Into A Salty Snack With 2 Simple Ingredients

In many households, unripe fruit is inedible but not unsalvageable; we'll simply wait a few days for a bunch of green bananas to reach their soft, sweet peak. However, in some cases, unripe fruit is as delicious and desirable as their ripened forms. Such is the case with many tropical fruits, as evidenced by this Thai green papaya salad from Leah Cohen and this alternate green papaya salad from Tin Vuong, a Vietnamese and Chinese American chef. Green mango is another popular snack in Southeast Asia as well as India and Central and South America. Salt and chili are the two ingredients that all of these cultures use to turn unripe mango into a salty snack.

Unripe mango is crunchy and intensely sour with varying undertones of fruitiness. Salt is an all-purpose tool to bring out the tasting notes in anything you sprinkle it over, from desserts to steaks, so it'll certainly bring out the fruity flavor hidden behind all that acidity. Chili powder is a popular garnish for ripe and unripe mangoes because the heat and spice will temper sweetness just as effectively as it balances the tartness of green mangoes.

The pulp of green mango is hard, crunchy, and considerably less messy to prepare than its ripe counterpart. You can cut green mangoes into chunks or sticks or leave them in the skin and make small slits horizontally across each half before adorning them with salt and chili powder to taste.

Chili powder comes in many forms, from the tangy, salty, and spicy Tajín in Mexico to Kashmiri chili powder in India. You can try this variety pack of Amazing Chilis and Spices brand guajillo, ancho, and chile de arbol powders to see which flavor you prefer. You can also mix chili powders of different heat leaves for more depth. Of course, you can make your own chili powder blend with common spices and aromatics like cayenne pepper, cumin, garlic, and onion powder. Sumac or lime zest would also be delicious additions to a homemade chili powder, complementing mangoes with a citrusy brightness.

If you're willing to bring more ingredients to the mix, juice from oranges and limes would bestow a subtle sweetness and even more zestiness to brighten a green mango snack. Swap salt for sugar if you want a trifecta of sweet, sour, and spicy. A single condiment that will give you this same sweet, sour, and spicy profile is chamoy, a Mexican favorite made with chilies, sugar, and pickled plums. If you want to stick to unripe mangos as a salty snack, you can also pickle mangoes in a salt brine with vinegar and peppercorns or other spicy seasonings, as pickled mangoes are a delicacy in India and other Southeast Asian countries.