How to Eat Soursop: Picking It, Opening It, and What to Do With the Pulp

By Suhail Rivera, JD, founder of Alkaline Herb Shop

Soursop is a spiky green fruit that intimidates people who have never handled one, mostly because nobody explains the basics. Here is how to tell when a soursop is ripe, how to open it without a fight, what the pulp actually is, why the seeds are not eaten, and how the fruit differs from the dried leaf we actually sell.

What soursop is

Soursop is Annona muricata, a fruit from a small tropical tree grown across Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and West Africa. It goes by several names: guanabana in Spanish speaking countries, graviola in Brazil, and soursop in English. The fruit is large and oval, covered in soft, curved spines over dark green skin, and can weigh anywhere from about a pound to several pounds.

How to tell when it is ripe

A ripe soursop gives slightly under gentle pressure, the way a ripe avocado or peach does. Hard and firm means it needs more time on the counter. The skin also dulls from bright green toward a slightly yellow green, and the spines soften and bend rather than poke back. A soursop that has gone dark and soft in patches is past ripe into overripe, which still works for pulp but tastes more fermented.

Soursop is almost always picked hard and ripened afterward, since a tree ripened fruit bruises and spoils before it can travel. Leave it on the counter, not the refrigerator, until it gives.

How to open it

Once ripe, cut the fruit in half lengthwise with a sharp knife. Ripe skin cuts easily, closer to a papaya than a coconut. Inside is white, fibrous pulp packed with large black seeds around a tougher core. Scoop the pulp out with a spoon, working it away from the core, or pull the halves apart by hand into sections. The skin and core get discarded; only the white pulp is eaten.

The seeds are not eaten

Soursop pulp is threaded with shiny black seeds, often forty to a hundred per fruit. They are not eaten. Most people pick them out by hand as they go, or press the pulp through a strainer, the same way you would deseed a pomegranate. If you are blending the pulp for a drink, strain it first. Seeds in a blender just means seeds in the glass.

Texture and flavor

The pulp is soft, stringy, and custard like, somewhere between a very ripe banana and a pineapple. The flavor is tart and sweet together, often described as a cross between strawberry and pineapple with a sour, citrus like edge. It is not a mild fruit, and fresh pulp is genuinely fragrant, the smell alone tells you it is ready. Most people do not eat it plain off a spoon for long, since the tartness is strong on its own.

What people do with the pulp

Soursop pulp shows up most often blended into juice, a smoothie, or a punch, usually with coconut milk, citrus, or banana to round out the tartness. It also goes into ice cream, sorbet, and paletas, where the custard like texture works well frozen. Our soursop coconut punch recipe blends soursop leaf powder with banana and coconut milk instead of fresh pulp, since the leaf is what we carry, but it shows the flavor pairing.

The fruit and the leaf are not the same product

Worth saying plainly: Alkaline Herb Shop does not sell fresh soursop fruit or pulp. We sell the dried leaf, in whole leaf, powder, tea bag, and capsule form. Leaf and fruit come from the same tree but are different parts of the plant, prepared differently and tasting nothing alike. If you want to eat soursop pulp, look for a fresh or frozen fruit at a specialty grocer. If you want the leaf, we carry Soursop Leaves, 2 oz and Soursop Leaf Powder, 4 oz; our guide to soursop leaf tea covers that side of the plant.

Who should ask first

• Anyone pregnant or nursing should talk to a doctor before adding a new fruit, or a concentrated leaf preparation like tea or powder, to their diet.
• Anyone taking medication or managing a health condition should ask a doctor or pharmacist before drinking soursop leaf tea or taking soursop leaf capsules regularly.
• Do not eat or chew the seeds. They are hard and bitter, meant to be picked out and discarded, not swallowed or blended.
• Anyone with Parkinson's disease or another neurological condition, or with a family history of one, should raise it with a doctor before starting, since soursop belongs to a plant family that has drawn research attention on this point. Soursop is not meant for continuous long term use.

Suhail Rivera, JD, is the founder of Alkaline Herb Shop. She has spent years sourcing, handling, and selling the herbs she writes about, working directly with growers and third party testing labs. She holds a Juris Doctor. She is not a medical professional, and her articles are for general information, not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before starting any herb, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication or managing a health condition. Read more about her and the store on the About page.