Sunday, February 27, 2011

Ataulfo Mango

When we were in Chinatown in San Francisco recently we encountered a fruit that I had no clue what it was. It was small, yellow, weirdly kidney shaped and had a label that said "Cabello." 
I bought three of them to try. The box said mango on the outside, but I wasn't sure if they were in the original box. 
They were much smaller than any mango I've ever seen. 
When we got home I sliced into one and it clearly was a mango. The flesh looked and tasted like mango, but it was less than a quarter of the size of the traditional mangoes we normally eat. 
It was also less stringy than the normal mango and the seed is comparatively like a microchip. 
It is very thin (see above in the right half and below in the center - a side view)
and thus allows more mango flesh as a percentage of the mango, making it easier to cut (below the thin seed is just right of center and barely visible because it is a head-on view). 
Cabello is a company that specializes in marketing ataulfo mangoes. The ataulfo is grown in southern Mexico, in the states of Michoacan, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Veracruz and Chiapas. Wikipedia says they are sold between March and September, although I bought mine in February and they were ripe and tasty. If we had them available locally I would buy them. They are much easier to deal with than the traditional mangoes and the flesh is wonderful. I had some on my boiled whole wheat for breakfast and it was great. 

3 comments:

  1. So far this season, in the latino grocery store, all I've see are the bigger green and red mangos, but last year I bought plenty of the smaller yellow ones. I'll let you know when they show up. I LOVE mangos!

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  2. Thank you so much for your help. I bought 2 of these fruits at Wal-Mart & they were not labeled so I wasn't sure what they were. They are very tasty, I need to go buy more! :)

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  3. I too bought these at WalMart and there was no label or anything on the box, just the number for scanning. So glad to have finally found this page (after 20 mins of very intense digging online lol)

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