Many ways to eat a mango

Mango season is upon us. Right now in May, we can get raw green mangoes in the market, which are usually used to make the famous Sindhi mango chutney or make a mango pickle. Shikarpur is I believe famous in Sindh for its mango pickles. In this article we will briefly describe many ways in which mangoes are eaten in Sindh and around the world. 

Once ripe mangoes do arrive, what is done with them, how does one eat a mango? This is the question one of my American friends asked me. I told her: 

Well, Sindh’s Mirpurkhas area is the mango capital of the world, it is here the world famous Sindhri mangoes are grown and the world class Katchelo farms are located.

 In Sindh we eat diced mangoes for breakfast; they can be eaten for lunch as dessert or dinner as dessert. Diced mangoes can be part of a larger fruit salad ensemble.

Mangoes are eaten with rice in sautéed onion (Khushka) as a side dish in Sindh and in lower Sindh some people may eat it with unleavened flat bread (called maani in Sindhi).  Mango juice is drunk instead of the usual throat burning soda like a Pepsi in the summer to cool off. In Recent time, many more creative ways to eat mangoes have been invented.  

Mango buttermilk (Lassi) is big in cities like Karachi; apart form that in India some people have started to make barfi out of mango, not to mention the mango milk shake and mango ice cream. In Thailand they cook sticky rice with mango as a sweet dish which can be eaten at breakfast.

In America, mangoes can be eaten as breakfast or as part of fruit salad as in Sindh, in addition to that they can be used to bake a mango pie, a mango cake.  A mango smoothie can be refreshing drink in the summer. They even make a soup with green cardamom out of mango and banana.

Mangoes in different styles