Two key ingredients are all that’s needed to tame the bracingly sour flavor of unripened green mango: fresh lime juice, and alguashte, a ground condiment made from roasted pumpkin seeds.
Fresh lime juice meets green mango’s intensity with its own tart bite.
Rich and nutty alguashte (ground roasted pumpkin seed seasoning) adds earthy depth.
Mango verde, or mango tierno as it’s known throughout El Salvador and Central America, is green mango that’s been cut from its branches before it ever gets the chance to ripen. In contrast to its more mature orange counterpart, this pale green mango is crunchy—somewhere between a carrot and a cucumber in firmness—and packs a sharp, sour punch.
The resulting dish is eaten practically everywhere: as a street food, a festival snack, an after-school snack, or at a bar alongside a cold beer.
Green mango can sometimes be hard to find, but don’t let that put you off from trying alguashte: it’s also popular on other fresh-cut fruits, including ripe mangoes, jicama, oranges, and other tropical fruits and seeds, as well as stirred into savory dishes.
