Pomelo | Tropical Fruits | Tourism Malaysia

malaysia pomelo

The pomelo is a favorite tropical fruit among all races in Malaysia. It’s available throughout the year. As a result, you can see pomelos in almost all places in Malaysia. Not only do the fruit stalls by the streets sell them, the upscale hypermarkets also have got a handful of this delicious fruit for sale.

The pomelos are the biggest fruit of the citrus family. They are in the same family as oranges, lemons, grapefruit and pomegranates. The origin of pomelo is unclear but it’s thought to have come from the bio-geographical area called Malesia which stretches from Malaysia, through Indonesia to Papua New Guinea.

Pomelo is the biggest fruit of the citrus family.

The shape of pomelo is round and sometimes a little bit of oval with the size of a small soccer ball. Its skin is very thick but soft. The skin color is light green and will turn lemon yellow as the fruit ripens. As with most citrus, the flesh of pomelo is divided into segments. It’s largely covered by pulp that has tough membranes which need to be peeled off. Some pomelos are almost seedless, while others contain annoying amount of seeds. Nevertheless, the seeds are small and hard which can be easily noticed. Luckily most pomelos don’t have seeds or have few seeds.

A pomelo that has its skin peeled.

The flesh of pomelo is normally juicy and sweet. But some can be dry and somewhat tasteless. It’s hard to tell whether a pamelo is sweet or sour when you are buying it off the rack. The traders can’t tell either by judging from its appearance. Therefore, it all depends on pure luck. After you have peeled the skin off, the flesh can be either pale lemon or a lovely strawberry color and it varies in sweetness and juiciness. Most Malaysians get around the problem of less than perfect pomelos by treating them as a salad vegetable or dipping them in chili-hot sauce.

The juicy and delicious pomelo flesh

In short, the pomelo is definitely one of the tropical fruits in Malaysia that you got to try. It’s not that expensive. One typical pomelo which weights around 1kg to 1.5kg costs between RM10 to RM15. It serves as an excellent snack in the evening and can easily quench your thirst especially in hot tropical weather like Malaysia.