Mango Tutorial

After a long day of cleaning and grocery shopping yesterday, I wanted something quick and easy for dinner.  But I also wanted to use the huge bag of red snapper, my uncle generously gave us, that has been in our freezer for a month.

I decided to make fish tacos with mango salsa. Yum.

Through a few conversations I’ve discovered that mangos are a little bit overwhelming for some people.  They just do not know what to do with them or how to cut them.

So here’s a little tutorial to help you the next time you see mangos on sale.

First peel the skin off the mango.  You can use a knife, but I much prefer a vegetable peeler. Then cut off the stem area with a sharp knife.

You cannot slice through a mango. You can however cut off the fleshy sides.  The core is difficult to cut and tastes like pine, so you don’t want that part.  Cut off the sides, any part that is easy to slice through.  Go around the mango cutting off slices and chunks until you have all of the fleshy exterior removed.

You will be left with something that looks like this.  This is the part that is inedible.  It’s easy to figure out what you can’t eat because it’s really difficult to sliced through it.  It’s tough.  You should taste a bit of the core for your first time, just so you recognize the taste of an unripe mango.  Mmmm, pine.

Discard this part.

Next, I sliced my mango into cubes.  I used two mangoes for this recipe.

Then, I chopped one red bell pepper.

I usually use red onion but the two in the fridge had gone bad. 🙁  So, I chopped 1/2 a large sweet yellow onion.

Next, I finely chopped about 1/2 cup of cilantro.

Last, I juiced two limes over the salsa, salted generously to taste, and stirred.

I cooked a bunch of red snapper, way more than we could eat, in a generous amount of salt and pepper, cumin, onion powder, and a bit of cayenne.

This wasn’t calculated cooking.  I just added a lot of spices until I thought the fish tasted good.

Brad toasted corn tortillas in a skillet, while I chopped a head of red cabbage and sliced an avocado.

We assembled our fish tacos and added a big dollop of Greek yogurt.

Nothing goes better with fish tacos than a Corona.  🙂  It’s kind of like being at a seaside restaurant in somewhere way more warm and tropical than North Carolina in January.

I can dream, can’t I?