Mangosteen Lemon Juice | Mangosteen Lemonade | Mangoosthan Juice

How many of you know about Mangosteen fruit? It is known as the "Queen of Tropical fruits" I guess many of you must be unaware about this kind, but for sure you are missing out one of the best tasting and most praised fruit. This is such a divine tasting fruit that is so fleshy, succulent and sweet with a very mild lemon tang. It does not have much seeds in it, the outer portion of the fruit or the rind (almost like a shell) is purple in color and tastes bitter, but said to have many medicinal values. The inner white, tender, fleshy portion is the edible fruit that looks like a collection of garlic pods. There will be 4 to 8 pods in each fruit and one of them will be bigger than the other ones, this pod will have a seed in it. Mangosteen aka, Mangoosthan in Tamil is a tropical fruit found in very warm and highly humid regions mostly in Southern India and South East Asia. I just love this fruit to the core, it makes me nostalgic. When I was a kid we had many picnics to the nearby waterfalls filled scenic spot "Courtallam" This place was just 100 km away from my native, the travel time by road is just 2 hours, this was the best known picnic spot near our town. But I was not a big fan of such damp places, though I love wandering about admiring the nature and love watching the waterfalls, but definitely taking a bath in those waterfalls was a scary thing for me. But still I love going with our family just to enjoy the road trip, the picnic food tamarind rice or lemon rice, accompanied with boiled eggs, potato chips and coconut thogayal (yum!) and of course the shopping done after the waterfalls visit. I am not mentioning the lavish shopping here, I mean the humble fruit shopping. Yes! Courtallam has a huge variety of fresh tasty fruits and everyone would stock most of them on their way back home, as you wont get most of them in the city markets. I love the kind of fruits we get there, specially Rambutan and this special fruit Mangosteen. So every year when we visit Courtallam we will definitely return back home with dozens of these fruits to enjoy relishing them at home. Recently I came across this Mangosteen fruit in a fruit shop while grocery shopping and I was jumping with joy, I purchased a whole lot of them and as soon as I reached home was indulging myself nostalgically into this fruit. After relishing almost half of the fruits, the same day!!! I decided to make some drink with it and ended up making this wonderful tasting lemonade. The mangosteen fruit is too sweet and has a special flavor that adds a delight to the lemonade or juice. 

Now let me tell you something more about this fruit. Mangosteen has been said to have certain medicinal values, I do not know whether it has been proven, but some claim that mangosteen has cancer curing properties. The fruit has a high amount of antioxidants and hence might have been said so. If this is a true fact then I would say there is definitely no tastier and sweeter medicine than this. The purple colored rind is bitter in taste but is said to have curing properties too. It has been said to treat dysentery, diarrhea, urinary problems and acne trouble. Whatever the properties are you do not certainly need any definite reason to force you into tasting this wonderful fruit. It is such a delectable flavored fruit that you should not miss. Next time when you spot this fruit just grab some and give a try, you will definitely get addicted to it. You can make smoothies, juices or even add it to fruit salads and make it even more delightful. You can have it plain too, just chill the fruit and enjoy relishing the succulent pieces. Now lets see how to make a simple yet refreshing Mangosteen lemonade. 

INGREDIENTS

Serves one person
Total Preparation Time - 5 to 10 minutes

1. Mangosteen fruit - 4 (aka Mangoosthan in Tamil)
2. Chilled water -  300 ml
3. Lemon - 1 lemon 
4. Sugar - 1 tablespoon (or) Sugar Free - 3 pellets (or as per taste)
5. Ice cubes - optional

PREPARATION METHOD

• Cut lemon into two halves and squeeze juice out of it, discard seeds and set aside. 
• Take a mangosteen fruit, insert the knife half inch into the rind and slide the knife around the fruit, you don't have to chop them into two; without halving them just slide the knife around the fruit so that it does not touch the inner fleshy part. Else you can just press the fruit firmly until the outer thick skin / rind (this rind will be almost half an inch thick) tears open, then twist and tear until it opens apart. If you are unsure about the latter method you can slice the fruit; check the pics below for better understanding. 
• Scoop the fleshy white fruit portion and discard the purple-brown colored rind part (it will be very juicy and sweet), do the same with the rest of the fruits. i.e. Collect the white fruit portion from all the fruits and discard the rind. (There will be approximately 4 to 8 pod like, fleshy white fruit, among that one fruit pod will be bigger than the other ones, this will have a white seed inside it, just remove that and then proceed)
• Now add this white fleshy fruit portion to a blender and blend well until it becomes a smooth fruit paste. 
• Now take a jar, add water sugar and stir well. After the sugar dissolves, add the mangosteen paste and lemon juice (add only half of the lemon juice initially, then taste and add if needed, if you add all the juice at a time and if it becomes very tangy you will have a difficult job in adjusting the flavors once again, diluting the juice will not be a good idea) stir well until the juice gets mixed up well. 
• You can add some ice cubes if you wish. Serve!! 

TIP 1: The color of the juice came from the rinds of mangosteen. You can add some of the rind pieces to get a nice colored drink, the rind seems to have some medicinal properties but it tastes bitter. Adding a small piece does not make much difference. 

TIP 2: Add more of the fruit to make a smoothie. For a smoothie you don't need sugar to sweeten it, as the fruit will be very sweet enough. But when diluting to make a lemonade you will need some sweetening agent like sugar or honey or sugar free. 

A very refreshing and tasty Mangosteen juice is now ready!! Serve chilled, you will definitely love this drink!!