Green mango juice

I’m craving a glass of green mango juice right now.

The curious thing is that when I originally posted this recipe, the dry and humid season was ending and the monsoon season was starting. That means mango season was almost over and we were getting more mangoes that were sold while still green and unripe. Too late to leave them to ripen in the trees where they will rot and fall if left exposed to days and nights of torrential rains. For us, that meant plenty of green mangoes to puree into green mango juice.

Unlike ripe mangoes, the flesh of unripe ones isn’t soft enough to scoop to separate from the skin. To prep the green mangoes, we use a vegetable peeler to remove the skin. That’s to ensure that very little flesh gets discarded.

Then, the flesh is cut with a small knife. As another assurance that we get as much of the flesh as we can, we cut around the center stone.

With the fruit flesh ready for pureeing, the remaining issue is how much sugar to add to make a sweetish drink that is still pleasantly tart. How much sugar you need to create a good balance with the tartness of unripe mango depends on how unripe the fruit is.

Very unripe mango, with flesh the shade of the lightest green, is more tart than one that has started to soften and turn yellow-green. At the same time, because you need to add water to the shaved green mangoes to process them into a puree in the blender, the tartness will be diluted too by the amount of water you use.

So, my suggestion is that you add a minimal amount of sugar when you start processing. Add more only as needed.