Salak Fruit Aka Snake Fruit

I brought my mum to the tamu at E-Mart in Miri as she has never been there. We saw a lot of salak and decided to buy some to try. The fruit, with its reddish-brown scaly skin, looks disgusting at sight as the fruit peel resembles scales of a snake. Known also as snake fruit, the ugly fruit is such a turnoff that I have always resisted trying it until today.

There was an abundance of salak fruits at the tamu in E-Mart Miri.

The bunch of salak fruits that I bought

Salak is a species of palm tree native to Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia. It is a very short-stemmed palm, with leaves up to 6 metres long; each leaf has a 2-metre long petiole with spines up to 15 centimetres long, and numerous leaflets.

Salak fruits growing at the base of a salak palm tree

The fruit grow in clusters at the base of the palm. The fruit can be peeled by pinching the tip, which should cause the skin to slough off so it can be pulled away. The fruit inside consists of three lobes that each contains a large black inedible seed.

Peeling off the skin is easy

Salak fruits with skin peeled off

The three seeds inside the salak fruit that I ate

I gingerly took a tiny bite of the fruit, expecting myself to spit out the fruit. Was I in for a surprise! Just like durian, salak fruit looks ugly from the outside but tastes real nice inside. The fruit is sweet and crunchy like an apple.

Look can be so deceiving….you realize how true that saying is when you try out a salak!