Red with tinges of green, oval shaped and covered with ‘hair’. That is what a rambutan fruit looks like. Known to botanists as Nephelium lappaceum, the rambutan is a member of the Sapindaceae family and is native to the Southeast Asia region.

Hair? What hair?

Fruit

The fruit, which is green when unripe, has thin leathery skin and is about 3-6 cm long and 3-4 cm wide. The name rambutan comes from the Malay word rambut which means hair. This hair is actually pliable spines which are mainly red with tinges of green at the tips.

The fruit come in loose bunches of about 10 to 15. Most fruit are red in colour however there are varieties that are yellow or orange-ish.

The flesh itself is translucent with a tinge of white. It has a sweet flavour that is pleasing to most palates, and is juicy. The seed is almond shaped, about 3 cm long, with a white centre and covered with a thin light brown shell outside¹. It tastes bitter when bitten into and should not be eaten with the flesh. The flesh of a fruit that is just ripe should peel right off the seed. However, if the rambutan is overripe, the flesh ‘sticks’ to the seed and is hard to separate and eat cleanly.

The fruit should be eaten about a week or so after harvest. If kept for a few days, you will be able to see that the spines will begin to wilt and turn brown/black. However, the fruit is still good to be eaten. Once the skin begins to look withered and looks like it has lost some of its moisture, the rambutans have passed their best before date.

Rambutans can be kept for about three to five days after the date of purchase. The best way to keep rambutans after you have bought them is to store them in the refrigerator covered with plastic film, to help slow down moisture loss. If you live in a humid country, like Malaysia, the fruit can be left out.

Tree

The rambutan is a tropical medium-sized evergreen tree that grows to a height of 10 to 20 metres. The flowers are small and white. There are male trees which produce do not produce fruit, only male flowers²; female trees which produce female flowers; and hermaphrodite trees which produce both male and female flowers.

These trees can be propagated by seed or by bud grafting, though of course, the latter method will produce quicker results. The trees fruit about twice annually.

The fruit needs to ripen on the tree before it can be harvested. To harvest the fruit, the bunches or clusters are cut from the branch, usually with a cutter on a long pole, as the trees tend to be tall. Fruits need to be handled carefully as they bruise pretty easily.

How do I eat it?

Once you have identified your rambutan and determined it is not a lychee, longan, or even a dragon fruit, you are ready to begin³.

• Either make a small cut into the skin at the equator of the fruit, bite into the rind as it is soft⁴, or just break open the skin using a strong thumbnail⁵.
• Once there is a small cut in the rind, it can be easily pried open with your fingers. Mind the juice!
• You should now have a nice fruit in your hand with half the rind off. You can now slowly squeeze it out and pop it into your mouth.
• Work the flesh off, and then spit out the seed.

Rambutans are best eaten fresh but can be also found canned in syrup, and also stewed as a dessert. A preserve can also be made of the fruit where the boiled flesh is combined with sugar and cloves.

Little things

• Rambutans have traditional medicinal uses: the fruit can act as a vermifuge; the bark has an astringent quality; and a decoction of the roots can reportedly be taken to allay fevers.
• ’Rambutan’ has a name sake in ‘Tanjung Rambutan’⁶, a small town off Ipoh, Perak. Tanjung Rambutan is the location of a famous Malaysian government-owned mental institution, Hospital Bahagia⁷. Childish taunts reference Tanjung Rambutan to indicate that the person is mentally unstable.