Lakpura® Dehydrated Baby Jackfruit Slices are pieces of young, unripe jackfruit, known in Sri Lanka as polos, that have been dried so they keep in the cupboard until you are ready to cook. Young jackfruit is picked before the fruit sweetens and before its seeds harden, and in a Sri Lankan kitchen it is treated as a vegetable rather than a fruit.
The slices are cut across the whole young fruit, so each piece shows the pale fibrous flesh fanning out from the core with the small, soft seed pockets still in place. They are dehydrated at a low temperature, which leaves them light, dry and a warm straw colour, as in the photograph.
To prepare them, immerse the slices in boiling water for 40 minutes. They take the water back up and return close to the texture, colour and aroma of the fresh young fruit, ready to be drained and cooked.
Once rehydrated, the pieces go where fresh polos would go. The best-known dish is polos curry, in which young jackfruit is simmered slowly with roasted curry spices and coconut milk until the fibres soften and pull apart, a texture often compared to pulled meat.
