Mangosteen

With all the exotic tropical fruits I tried, I like mangosteen the most. 

It has purplish red skin (i.e. rind) and white fruit, and is tasted lightly sweet and sour.

Mangosteen with green stem

mangosteen fruit

How to open it?

The brute force way is to use knife to cut it open at circumference. For properly ripe mangosteen, one can simply squeeze to crack it open.

squeeze to open

How to tell if a Mangosteen is good?

We bought mangosteen regularly from a specific fruit stand, and we had good mangosteen every time. One time we saw large bags of large mangosteens at another fruit stand, which were sold at very good price. We bought two bags. Unfortunately the mangosteens were hard, and I could not squeeze open most of them, the fruits were either rotten, or become translucent.

Based on my experience and online literature, a mangosteen has following characteristics is suspect of being bad:

1) hard skin - over ripe, not good for eating. 

2) brown and floppy stems - over ripe, not good for eating

2) yellow spots on its skin - the fruit is rotten inside already

3) leaking juice is not good.

A good mangosteen is properly ripe when the outer peel is smooth, purplish red in color, and yields slightly with gentle pressure from your thumb.

Mangosteen Facts

Mangosteen is native to southeast Asia.

In Southeast Asia, mangosteen is commonly known as the "Queen of Fruit", and is frequently paired with durian, the "King of Fruit". In Chinese food therapy, mangosteen is considered "cooling", making it a good counterbalance to the "heaty" durian.

Mangosteen in Chinese - shan zhu 山竹.

Mangosteen is nutritious, and slightly sweet and sour, which make it great as a snack or desert.