It’s time for the first actual plant post! Today I ate “bitter melon” (Momordica charantia). This is a cucumber- or squash-like fruit which is extremely bitter (it ain’t called bitter melon because it’s sweet!), and is usually either sliced and cooked, or stuffed and cooked whole.

There are two kinds of cultivars of bitter melon: the relatively smooth Chinese style with rounded ends, and the Indian kind which has a much gnarlier surface texture, with pointed ends, and is usually a darker green.

I’d only ever heard of the fruit being eaten, but according to Wikipedia, “the young shoots and leaves of the bitter melon may also be eaten as greens”. I wonder how those compare to the fruit in bitterness…

Taxonomy

Momordica charantia is in the family Cucurbitaceae, along with cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and squash.

Source

Sara picked up a bitter melon at the local 99 Ranch for $0.99/lb.

Method of Preparation

I cooked the bitter melon in a Chinese-style stir-fry with black bean sauce. (I think it’s Cantonese-style but I’m not quite sure, so I just say “Chinese-style”.) I basically followed this recipe with a few minor substitutions (garlic powder instead of fresh garlic because my garlic cloves all sprouted, etc.). I also put in a fair amount of diced Field Roast gluten loaf because Sara loves it and it could tip the balance from something gross and bitter to something she actually wants to eat. =)

I think parboiling in plenty of water is a crucial step in preparing this vegetable, because it extracts some of the bitter flavor and takes it down from “holy moly this is bitter!” to a milder bitterness more akin to unsweetened chocolate or coffee.

The sauce came out pretty nice with the ingredients in that recipe. The chopped black beans thicken it up in lieu of any cornstarch or other thickener, which is nice.

Review

Sara and I had tried bitter melon before, and she couldn’t eat more than a bite of it. It was simply too bitter. She recently bought it again hoping to find some way to enjoy it. I was worried she’d have the same reaction to this dish, but some combination of the parboiling and the spicy and savory sauce made it much more palatable. She enjoyed the “nice, filling texture” and even called the bitter melon “meaty”. She said it went well with the “strong spicy flavor from the garden [chili]” (I used manzano pepper Capsicum pubescens, which will certainly be the subject of another post), and overall found it “tasty with a surprising bitter aftertaste”.

Overall, I’d say before you write off bitter melon as something you’ll never try again because it’s too bitter, make sure you try preparing it by parboiling and cooking in a strong-flavored sauce.