For those who are not experienced in using finger limes I thought it might be helpful to give you some tips that I have learnt about finger lime preparation in the kitchen. It depends on your recipe plan, but generally you will need to remove the flesh from the fresh fruit and ideally remove the seeds. This can be time consuming and awkward, but I have a few tricks that may be helpful.
REMOVING THE FLESH
There are two ways to remove the flesh efficiently. You can cut the fruit in half and squeeze the flesh out. Alternatively you can cut it lengthways and scoop it out with a teaspoon.
With a thin skinned variety and a softer skin squeezing works well.
With a longer shaped variety or one with a thick skin, then it is best to scoop out the flesh.
Our Byron Sunrise and Wauchope are thinner skinned varieties.
Our Mary or WG variety is best by this method.
REMOVING THE SEEDS
This is a task which is not a popular one in our house. It isn't always necessary if there are only a few seeds or if the visuals of the dish don't require it. The following tips will make it quicker and easier.
We find that it helps to combine the use of a dish of water, a teaspoon and a small strainer as demonstrated in the video below.
You can see the seeds.
The water washes the finger lime pearls and removes the natural stickiness.
This allows the seeds to be removed and the pearls can be separated.
As an added bonus you will find the pearls much simpler to plate up when they are not clumping together.
SUMMARY
If you try the methods outlined above you should be able to reduce your preparation time significantly. In addition when it comes to plating up you will be able to give your dishes greater visual impact.