How to Make Pawpaw Beurre Blanc (Butter Sauce)
working in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley provide her with many opportunities to expand her
culinary horizons and continue to learn and grow through hunting, fishing, foraging, and farming.
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Pawpaws hold a special place in my heart. I had never heard of them when I moved to VA, but was thrilled to discover a small stand of trees in my yard, just inside an old stone wall marking the original property line.
Asimina triloba is America’s largest native fruit and a relative of the custard apple and soursop. The trees grow in the understory, with smooth gray bark, broad, glossy leaves that widen toward the tip and deep reddish-purple “upside down” flowers in the early spring. The fruits are oblong and pale green, with thin skin like a pear that can be smooth with a bloom (like a blueberry) or shiny and almost pebbly, like an avocado. They may grow in clusters. In fact, we are trying to figure out if we have more than one variety here!
The aroma of pawpaws is alluring, and the flavor is unique — something like a mango and ripe banana with floral notes. I’ve eaten some with more of a piney taste. The flesh is cream to pale orange-yellow in color and so soft, you can eat it with a spoon. Avoid the skin and big brown seeds! Pick them when they begin to fall from the trees and try to get to fallen fruits before other animals do. I’ve read that indigenous people and other mammals helped distribute this late summer treat all around its current range.
The tropical taste and gorgeous color of pawpaw pulp inspired this recipe.
A beurre blanc is a classic foundational French sauce traditionally made with butter, cream, white wine, lemon, and shallots. My variation incorporates lime and coconut milk, and smells absolutely heavenly on the stove! Harvesting pawpaws is a fun way to celebrate the change of seasons, with the sweetness of summer and the promise of fall captured in every luscious bite.
Try this sauce on cooked white fish, seafood like shrimp, scallops, crab, or even poultry and pork.
Serving Size: 6-8 servings
Time to make: 45 minutes
Special Equipment: Cone strainer & pestle, mesh strainer, electric food chopper or blender
Also works with: Mango puree
Looking for more great sauces for wild game? Try out this chimichurri sauce by Justin Townsend!
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Pawpaw Beurre Blanc (Butter Sauce)
6
servings30
minutes15
minutesServe over protein: bass, wild-caught shrimp, crab, scallops, or even poultry and pork.
Keep the screen of your device on
Ingredients
- For the Pawpaw Pulp
Fresh, clean, whole wild pawpaws (Asimina triloba). It’s best to pick and process a large amount due to the effort and cleanup involved. I used just under 10 pounds to yield about 8 cups of pulp using my method.
- For the Beurre Blanc
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ cup sweet onion, finely chopped
½ cup white wine
Juice of ½ lemon
Juice of 1 lime
⅓ cup unsweetened coconut milk (use a whole fat variety without fillers)
⅔ cup pawpaw pulp
2 sticks unsalted butter
Preparation
- FOR THE PAWPAW PULP
- Ensure your fruits are cleaned of debris, and very gently washed and dried – especially if they’ve fallen on the ground.
- Place a large bowl under the basket of your cone strainer, deep enough to collect the pulp but not too wide to fit within the stand of the strainer.
- Slice the pawpaws in half crosswise and squeeze them into the basket of the cone strainer, seeds and all. Repeat until the basket is ⅔ full. Discard pawpaw skins.
- Using the pestle of the cone strainer, smush the pawpaw pulp around in the cone strainer basket in a circular motion, following the angle of the basket with the tapered shape of the pestle. Use an up and down motion to push pulp and seeds into/against the basket. Do it firmly but not so hard you break any seeds!
- You will see pawpaw liquid start to seep through the holes in the strainer basket into the bowl. Use a rubber spatula to scrape the outer sides of the basket into the bowl, too.
- Eventually, you will have more seeds than pulp. Brush all seeds into the well of the basket and continue to press them against the walls of the basket with the pestle until as much of the fleshy membrane attached to the seeds comes off.
- Remove the seeds from the basket.
- Repeat steps 1-7 until all your pawpaws are made into pulp. The back side of a chef’s knife works well to scrape flesh from the skins. You do not want any skin or seeds in your puree!
- FOR THE BEURRE BLANC
- Melt 2 tbs of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
- Add your onion and sweat it until translucent, stirring frequently. Keep an eye on the butter to ensure it doesn’t burn.
- Add the wine, lemon juice, and lime juice; lightly cook while stirring frequently until reduced to about 2-3 tbs of liquid (the onions will appear nearly “dry”).
- Add the coconut milk and pawpaw pulp, stirring well to combine. A whisk is the preferred tool. Cook for 1 minute and reduce heat, removing pan from the burner if necessary to achieve a temperature of 190 degrees F or less.
- Add your 2 sticks of butter very slowly, about 1 tbs at a time at most, stirring it into the mixture with your whisk. The mixture will resemble Hollandaise sauce at first and gradually become smoother and shinier. Stir frequently and keep your heat very low! It will not emulsify properly if the temperature is too high.
- Once all your butter is incorporated into the sauce, transfer it into your electric food chopper/blender and blend until creamy.
- PUTTING IT TOGETHER
- Serve the pawpaw beurre blanc immediately by drizzling it over your protein of choice. White fish, scallops, and shrimp, or even chicken and pork.
- Notes
- In step 6, some chefs opt instead to strain the sauce through a mesh strainer to remove the onion. I prefer to blend it in, but straining may result in a thinner, more velvety texture. If at the blending/straining stage the sauce seems too thick, add a touch more coconut milk.
- To store pawpaw pulp, vacuum seal using the Moist setting and freeze the bags flat on a cookie sheet. It’s best to use the beurre blanc immediately, but it can also be chilled or frozen, at the expense of quality.
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