Mango 🥭

Intensely sweet with bright acidity when ripe; floral, peachy, slightly piney notes. Unripe green mango is crisp, tart, and mouth-puckeringly sour — a delicacy in its own right across Southeast Asia.

Mango is typically in season Southeast Asia (Mar–Jun (Philippines); Apr–Jun (Thailand)); South Asia (Apr–Jul (India)); Latin America (Mar–Aug (Mexico)). Peak months shift between the northern and southern hemispheres.

Slice the two cheeks off either side of the flat stone, score them in a crosshatch and push the skin inside out "hedgehog" style — or eat it green and crunchy with salt and chili.

Fragrant and sweet-smelling at the stem end, and yields to gentle pressure like a ripe avocado — colour is not a reliable guide.

Mango is a nutritious everyday fruit, best enjoyed as part of a varied diet. It is a good source of vitamin C (about 36.4 mg per 100 g), supporting immune function and helping the body absorb iron from plant foods. Its pigments and polyphenols are antioxidants that population studies associate with heart health, though that reflects overall diet rather than any single fruit.

A typical fruit serving is roughly a handful, one medium fruit, or about 80 g, and two or more varied fruit servings a day is a sensible everyday pattern.

Mango belongs to the Anacardiaceae family, alongside cashew, pistachio, poison ivy and poison oak. Its skin and the sap at the stem contain urushiol and related compounds — the same class of allergens that cause poison-ivy dermatitis. People already sensitised by poison ivy or oak can react to mango skin on what is effectively their first mango exposure, with an itchy rash around the mouth or on the hands. The flesh itself does not normally cause this. If you are poison-ivy sensitive, let someone else peel it, or peel it wearing gloves and avoid touching your face.

Not by colour — that varies by variety, and plenty of ripe mangoes stay green. Use smell and give: a ripe mango smells sweet and resinous at the stem end, and yields to gentle pressure like a ripe avocado. Wrinkles near the stem are a good sign, not a bad one. A hard, scentless mango will ripen on the counter over a few days, faster in a paper bag with a banana.

It is edible and carries fibre and antioxidants, but most people do not, for three reasons: it is tough and resinous, it can be bitter, and it contains the urushiol-family compounds described above. If you do want to eat it, wash the fruit well and be aware of the allergy point. Green unripe mango, by contrast, is eaten skin and all across South and Southeast Asia with salt and chilli.