How to Eat Passion Fruit: Processing, Juicing, Storing & Using Fresh Passion Fruit
Last post I discussed How to Grow Passion Fruit, but what happens when you get your hands on some of this tasty tropical fruit? Below I’m sharing how I know my fruit is ripe, how we eat our passion fruit fresh, and how we store our extra harvests long term.
How to tell if a Passion Fruit is ripe?
These general guidelines pertain to our specific variety of passion fruit ‘passiflora edulis Frederick’ that typically ripens in late Summer/early Fall. Keep in mind that there are many different varieties of passion fruit—and some produce fruit that are not edible! Our Frederick passion fruit turns a deep purple when ripe.
Passion fruit MUST fall to the ground as the first sign of ripeness. They are unique in that they essentially pick themslelves.
The color should be a deep purple. Sometimes green fruit will fall to the ground due to plant stress, these are not ripe! In my experience, they will not ripen off the tree if they fall green and early.
I like to collect the fallen, purple passion fruits and let them sit at room temperature for a few days. They will get even sweeter and the skin can start to wrinkle. A lot of people say that the sweetest passion fruits are the wrinkly-skinned ones, so don’t write those off as too far gone.
Passion fruits should be fully colored (according to variety), plump, and slightly give when squeezed.
A bowl of ripe Frederick passion fruit. The wrinkly ones are extra sweet!
IMPORTANT: you don’t want to consume unripe passion fruit. Like most unripe things, they are not safe to consume and can cause digestive problems.
How Do You Eat Passion fruit?
Passion fruit is a delicious, sweet-tart fruit that is most often eaten fresh. One of my favorite ways to eat them fresh is scooped right out of the rind! Simply cut one in half and scoop out the inside pulp with a spoon—seeds and all! Other ways to eat them include:
♦ Spoon passionfruit pulp over yogurt
♦ Make my favorite Passion Fruit Juice Recipe
♦ Cut a papaya in half, remove the seeds, and scoop the pulp of a passionfruit into the center. You can scoop out a spoonful of papaya with passionfruit. I’m not kidding!
♦Impress dinner guests by making my favorite homemade vanilla ice cream and spooning fresh passion fruit pulp over each serving. Oh my!
♦ Make passion fruit curd or jam.
My passion fruit juice recipe is a refreshing beverage made of passion fruit pulp, water, and sugar. It’s like an agua fresca and can be frozen for future use.
Processing a lot of Passion Fruits for Pulp & Storage
The easy way…
When we need to process a large harvest of passionfruits that we won’t be able to eat in a timely manner, we simply remove the inner pulp into a freezer safe bag/container and freeze.
To freeze your passion fruit, decide what size portions you will need. I will do some portions that are 1 cup, but most baking recipes call for approximately 1/2 cup. Use the appropriate sized freezer bag, and pour in your pulp. Freeze flat for most efficient storage. You can also freeze in ice cube trays and then pop out the cubes into a freezer storage bag or use freezer safe mason jars. Don’t forget to label and put the date!
*other STORAGE notes: if you only have a few passion fruit and have no need for long term storage, you can refrigerate the overripe fruit for a couple days or you can leave smooth-skinned ripe fruit on the counter for a little bit and it will start to ripen even more with wrinkles.
Make sure you think about how much passion fruit you will actually need at any given time. I like to save pulp in 1 cup, freezer-safe mason jars or make a passionfruit agua fresca juice beverage and save that in freezer-safe pint jars.
How to process a lot of passionfruits for many uses…
The longer way (but a seedless finished product)
There is a more involved method to processing passionfruits that I find very handy—especially if you want to save your passion fruit for baking, popsicles, or making a juice drink. This method requires you to scoop your passionfruit pulp into a blender, gently pulse in the blender to separate seeds from the pulp, and strain out the seeds to produce the perfect, smooth, tangy liquid. This allows you to save your passion fruit in a seedless form (for baked goods or for personal preference) or even save some portions with minimal seeds. It’s very versatile! This process is demonstrated and broken down in the video tutorial below.
NOTES: do not blend the seeds up! The goal is not to grind the seeds into powder, but to pulse the flesh away from the seeds so you get the most juice possible from each fruit. Also, put aside the strained-out seeds for making my delicious Passionfruit Agua Fresca Juice Recipe.
Now that you have eaten your fill of passion fruit and prepped some for storage, check out my recipe for passion fruit agua fresca. I drink this juice for breakfast (like orange juice) or even pour into popsicle molds for some quick & easy passion fruit popsicles. Get my juice recipe HERE.
Comment below with your favorite ways to eat and use passion fruit. Have you tried this delicious tropical fruit?⇓
Meet Randi
Am Benson Kwikiriza a passion fruit farmer and juice extraction for commercial business, most espencially pulp production, and Am I need market.
May I ask where you purchased the passionfruit you grow if there is a time in the year I should be looking out for them to purchase from nurseries or big box stores? I have the green kind and am looking forward the purple one like yours as a friend has raved over how amazing they taste!
Hello! Around here most nurseries (and large stores) stock the edible purple passion fruit. Now is a good time to look since a lot of stores have fruit trees in preparation for the Spring/Summer months. Make sure to check that the tag says “edible” and mine is “frederick” which I highly recommend. If you can’t find them at your nearby nurseries, you can find some online too I believe. Good luck!
Thank you for posting & publishing this recipe. My Frederick (purple) passion fruit vine is going crazy and I have a lot of fruit to process. I look forward to using your blog to process my passion fruit into juice and agua fresca. I want to also try making popsicles and flan. I truly appreciate you offering the ratio of juice to water & sugar so I don’t mess it up!
I’m so glad! Thanks for taking the time to say hello and comment! Also, a passion fruit flan sounds incredible. Let me know how it goes!