“Male Papaya Flowers for Stir Fry - Wordless Wednesday”, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on June 30, 2010.
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Wow, I just learned something new today just by reading the title: stir-fried male papaya flowers.
ReplyDeleteI remember my grandparents would chop down male papayas in their farm. Its got no commercial value and a waste of space they said.
beautiful plant! That looks like a lot of papaya!
ReplyDeleteLooking pretty prolific! There's a large plant in Gainesville that endures lows in the teens farenheit... maybe someday I can acquire some seeds! My last papaya didn't make it, but you have strengthened my resolve to try again in a warmer part of the garden with a larger plant.
ReplyDeleteGosh what a big plant.
ReplyDeleteThis plant is less than 5ft tall found by a roadside in SPPK, Ipoh. The owner has planted this papaya plant in front of his home accross the road.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I have never seen a papaya plant that is raining with flowers like this one. Must be a treasure for the owner.
Male papaya plants do not produce papaya fruits. In Asia, male papaya flower buds are used in cooking, e.g. stirfried. If you need any recipes, ask me.
Male papaya serves no purpose to most of us.
ReplyDeleteLuckily nobody mentions the same to a man.
Lol, and Ah Yes! I wonder if somebody can tell me if it is possible to get a female papaya flower to 'mate' with a male papaya flower to successfully make the female papaya flower's overies to swell and produce an offspring i.e. the papaya fruit?
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that male papaya flowers were edible. I'll try some stir fry during the weekend!
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful papaya tree! Looks nice with so many flowers ;-)
ReplyDeleteThis is beautiful and so nice you can eat the flowers.
ReplyDeleteWhoa! I've never seen so many blooms in a Papaya tree and never knew they are edible! Wow! That's news...
ReplyDeleteFlowers for dinner sounds fantastic, like the look of them so hopefully they taste as the looks:)
ReplyDeleteBut, stealing posts, criminal !! I have changed your adress now, let's hope that it will not happen again, poor you..
Well I didn't know that papaya male flowers are eaten in Malaysia. We just ignore them here, or cut the plants to save space. Ok, i am asking you the recipe. But if you have a lot of green papaya for cooking, will you still use the flowers? Our ripe papayas are just eaten by birds, i dont eat them, you know. hehe. I dont like the smell of ripe papayas, but i eat the cooked green ones in stew.
ReplyDeleteYour question about using the male flowers from the male plants for fertilizing the female flowers are used in hybridization. Papaya are called dioecious plants because they the males and females are separate plants. However, i wonder why they did not call them trioecious, because there is also a hermaprodite plant, where the fruits are elongated unlike the rounded female fruits from female plants!
I didn't know the flowers can be eaten!
ReplyDeleteI've learned a lot from the photos and the comments. I wonder when stores here will carry them.
ReplyDeleteMale papaya flower buds which come in clusters are used in Malaysian and Indonesian cooking. These flowers are sometimes sold at wet markets in the smaller towns but not commonly sold in the cities. The buds are blanched in hot water (less than a minute)before being stir fried with eggplant and/or water spinach (kangkong), also in making kerabu. Blanching take away most of the bitterness but people who like this dish like the tinge of bitterness.
ReplyDeleteA simple dish is stir fry with egg:
Heat up some oil in a pan, add some chopped garlic and fry until fragrant. Break in an egg or two, stir fry. Lastly add in the flower buds and stir fry for a minute of less, i.e. lightly cooked but do not overcook. You may add in some shredded crab meat sticks. Stir frying makes the buds taste better, i.e. less or no more bitterness.
Andrea, female flowers are seldom used, as they left to become papaya fruits. The male flowers which are otherwise not wanted are used in cooking. I guess the local people are very clever, no wastage.
ReplyDeleteRainforest Gardener, don't throw away the seeds the next time you eat a tasty papaya. Use the seeds from the centre portion and sow the seeds on the soil. It may take a few weeks before the seeds sprout. See, from the garbage to the garden and then to the kitchen when the papaya plants bear fruits.
Amazing Autumn Belle, I love it when I see or learn something I never knew before. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful plant. I like how your pictures start out with the details and then pans out to show us the entire plant. I imagine the taste wonderful :-)
ReplyDeleteThe Papaya flowers are so pretty! I'm sure fruit in your climate taste sweet and absolutely delicious :)
ReplyDeleteI only know papaya as a JUICE and it is probably pretty tasty in a stir fry. You always teach me new things. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteGreat photos! It´s always nice to visit your blog... I´m sorry but lately I am so busy with my master degree.. I hope you friends may undertand, I hope that soon I´ll be able to post new photos too!.. kisses!
ReplyDeleteWhat a majestic looking plant. I like the way it holds its flowers well below the leaves as if the leaves are shading the flowers from the hottest sun. From reading your comments AB its so interesting to see that not one flower is left to waste.
ReplyDeleteI've one question for you - whats a "wet market"?
I seldom see male papaya tree! It's beautiful. Male papaya flower can be eaten? That's something new for me.
ReplyDeletewe generally boil it and consume as ulam.... and sometime mix with other herbs as kerabu. ~bangchik
ReplyDeleteRosey, I have never drank papaya juice before. Actually, I am embarassed to say that I didn't know that there is papaya juice! I learnt something new from you too.
ReplyDeleteRosie, in Asia, a wet market is an open market or traditional market where there are many vege, meat, seafood produce i.e. wet areas as opposed to the drier and cleaner supermarket or hypermarkets.
Wow, I never knew that male papaya flowers are edible! Something new that I'm learning here and seeing too such abundance for the first time in your lovely photos. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your blog's upgrade to dot com, Autumn Belle...will definitely update my links!
Have a lovely Friday and great weekend!
Hi Autumn Belle...I love the papaya flowers too. Your photos are wonderful. What a prolific bloomer!
ReplyDeleteWe make a dish out of it (apart from stir-fries) by using dry fish and we thicken it with rice flour.
About your question on my blog.... whether the mint-like ground cover is edible...it isn't. Grows well in this season. All to do with the rains.
I hope you have a great weekend!
I doubt I could get my hands on some around here, but that would be great to try! I may try your recipe with daylily.
ReplyDeleteThis is my 2nd post here. I read my post again, i need to check, hehe. What i mean by "we don't eat ripe papaya" is in my house in the province. But Filipinos eat lots of papayas, in face we have breeding programs here too for papayas to be tolerant to its virus diseases.
ReplyDeleteI must try that recipe, as it seems nice. At least male flowers will not go to waste, maybe it just needs getting used to. We have lots of stray plants in the farm which just grow and eaten by birds. In the future when food maybe difficult, we need to eat whatever is available. At the moment i love the green fruit in stew.
We call it "tinola" a very common dish here. Maybe i should tell you this in private mail, as this is already long. thanks.
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ReplyDeleteThis is the comment from Andrea on 5 July 2010 at 3:10pm
This is my 2nd post here. I read my post again, i need to check, hehe. What i mean by "we don't eat ripe papaya" is in my house in the province. But Filipinos eat lots of papayas, in face we have breeding programs here too for papayas to be tolerant to its virus diseases.
I must try that recipe, as it seems nice. At least male flowers will not go to waste, maybe it just needs getting used to. We have lots of stray plants in the farm which just grow and eaten by birds. In the future when food maybe difficult, we need to eat whatever is available. At the moment i love the green fruit in stew.
We call it "tinola" a very common dish here. Maybe i should tell you this in private mail, as this is already long. thanks.
I have never seen so many flowers on a papaya tree before! Nor have I really notice how the flowers looks like. When I see a papaya tree, I usually look at the papayas! Great photo.
ReplyDelete