Where can i find Durian in Chicago?

Question

and how can i tell teh difference between sweet and bitter?

Answer 1

hehehe trying ot find durain in US.. great!! cos I love durain..

yeah try the china town.. it seems to be the only place that sell these babies..

how to tell if sweet or bitter-sweet: colour of the flash.. the richer orange or richer yellow are usually sweet...

and the bitter-sweet one are : a bit green yellow and the yello doesn't look so good...

Answer 2

Check with the Asian grocery stores in the Chinatown. Unless you're an experienced durian connoisseur adept at recognising different durian varieties, you have to resort to asking the store owner what kind of durian you're buying.

Bear in mind durians don't travel well and any durians available in Western countries are very much a far cry & pale shadow of what fresh durians in Asia taste like, which I think is also a factor why many Westerners were turned off durian by tasting it in their home countries. I remember seeing shells that looked sickly black-green compared to the vibrant green shells seen in Asia.

As someone else mentioned, you don't need a chainsaw or drop it from the top of your house to open a durian. Just look for the segmented darker lines on the shell, use a knife (at least chef knife size) & jab the point into one of those lines. Use a side to side motion to pry it slightly apart. There's no need to use the knife to open the whole durian. Insert your fingers into the opened gap & just pull apart, the durian will open along the seam to become separated wedges. You'll see pieces of durian flesh nestled within grooves, just remove using your fingers. There are fairly big seeds inside each piece, so don't just pop the whole thing into your mouth! To get at the rest of the fruit, just place the balls of your palms on either side of a wedge and press down using some body weight to help, the wedge will split further starting from the seam at the top. That's it, Durian Opening 101 for Newbies! Enjoy & l**k your fingers!

To remove the durian odour from fingers, Asians usually rinse their hands using water collected in the grooves of a durian shell (not sure if it really works). To prevent inevitable sore throats (durians considered a 'heaty' food by Chinese), Asians traditionally drink some salt water after consuming durians.

Besides eating the fresh fruit, there's lots of other uses for durian in Asia, using the flesh or flavour. There's traditional durian cake (dodol), more modern cakes (cream, mousse, fudge & sponge cakes), cream puffs, pancakes, crepes, muffins, chilled puddings, milkshakes, candy, ice-cream, mooncakes, dried fruit chips etc. Some have a rather mild durian taste which even durian-haters can accept. But there are some which even durian lovers may baulk at, like durian fried rice!

Answer 3

Almost any Chinatown or Chinese S-mart would have one. Since they're imported from south east asia they would be in the frozen food section.

You can't tell whether the fruit is sweet or bitter until you buy it. Fresh (non frozen) durians usually emit a sweet smell when they're just ripe, (meaning that their sweet) but with frozen ones you'll have to look at the colour and estimate the age of the durian.

Some durians may already be half open and wrapped in cling wrap, others may have already been taken out of their shell and the edible parts placed in styrofoam containers. If you buy these, look at the colour of the flesh. A pale off-white indicates it may be still unripe, while a bright yellow means the flavor is at it's strongest, but avoid it if its banana-skin yellow (too ripe).

To cut or split a durian, simply cut along the 'seams' that you see on the spiny shell, indicated by the darker lines. Typically a large durian may have up to six or more sections.

After eating, make sure you drink plenty of water or you'll get a sore throat.

Answer 4

I just bought (2-22-08) Durian from Super H Mart (Asian supermarket), it was still about half frozen. I left it in the fridge overnight and we ate it the following day. It was an awesome experience. After dinner, I told my brother to go down to the basment fridge and grab the mutant hedgehog fruit thing and bring it up. I read somewhere that this fruit "smells like h**l, but tastes like heaven". Carrying the 8 pound fruit with both hands he placed it on the table. My family and I surrounded the massive spiky ball as if waiting for it to hatch. So, what's in this thing, and how do we open it? Using my intuition I took out a big saw knife and cut the tip of it, similarly to the way one would cut the crown off of a pineapple. WOW! what is this thing? Removing the scalp exposed 5 holes resembeling somekind of deformed bowling ball. But these holes were not empty, nope, they were filled with pudding! Not just any pudding, it smelled different but not bad like most people make it seem (they probably get over ripend or spoiled ones or somtin) nevermind the weird smell, these really did taste like heaven. We needed more access to the pudding so we cut a slit from the outside to one of the holes and pulled it open, this exposed a fat roll of this delicious pudding, we found 2 brazillian-nut-sized seeds as we exhausted the first pod. It's hard to describe the taste but it was sweet and creamy and fruity. I would definitely recommend for everyone to try it at least once and make it an amazing experience as we did. Durian is no longer an alien in my book.

Answer 5

Probably in Chinatown.  The shop owner will tell you if it is sweet.