Using Guavas

My current over abundance of guavas is fortunately not a problem. My chickens eat the vast majority of them. I wait until the fruit is quite soft, mash them with a hand mixer, them mix them in with cooked rice and other kitchen scrapes. They get to eat all the wild guavas that I gather. Those wild ones are far too sour for me, but the hens don't complain. 

I do have a sweet guava tree in the farm. And it produces enough fruit for my needs because we're not big guava eaters. 

 

Uses for guavas.....

... Fresh eating. Everything is edible - skin, seeds, flesh. 

... Added to a tropical smoothie. Drop in whole, uncooked or cooked. 

... Juice. I cook them in water (just enough to cover the fruits) then smash them using a hand mixer. When cool, I strain off the juice and use it for other recipes. Usually I'll strain the leftover pulp through a sieve to remove the seeds. 

... Guava pulp. Cook. Cool. Pour off the juice (for guava juice). Smash with a hand mixer. Force the pulp through a sieve to remove the seeds. (The discarded seeds either get added to my next smoothie or go into the chicken feed.) If the guava pulp is too thick, I'll simply stir some guava juice back into it. 

Guava juice and pulp can be used in all sorts of recipes. While I'm not a fan of pure guava juice, I like to mix it with other fruits to make a tropical drink. The juice can also be used to make guava jelly, though I've never tried to do it myself. 

Guava pulp lends itself well to kitchen experimentation. Guava jam is a no brainier. The pulp or juice can also be added to salad dressings, as a flavoring in batters and other coatings, in cookies/cakes/pies/icings, to flavor sour cream or cream cheese dip, as a sauce over ice cream, etc. Once I was at a friend's house for dinner and had guava glazed ham. She also makes a mean guava glazed chicken wing! Another friend made me a guava flavored flan. Yummy! 

Since guavas are seasonal, I tend to make my excess guavas into pulp then freeze it for future use.