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.
Salvadorans and Central Americans know the tingling feeling that mango verde provokes. The sight of it starts us involuntarily salivating. On its own, green mango’s flavor is perhaps too intense, so Salvadorans reach for two key ingredients to help balance it out. The first is, counterintuitively, fresh lime juice, which somehow manages to quell some of that sour intensity. On top of that goes a generous sprinkling of nutty and toasty alguashte, a ground seasoning made of roasted pumpkin seeds and salt.
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.
4 green (6-ounce; 170g) mangoes (see note), peeled, halved, and pitted
Fresh juice from 1 lime
Alguashte, for sprinkling
Kosher salt
Directions
Arrange the peeled mango halves on a plate. Squeeze lime juice all over, then generously top with alguashte. Season with salt and serve.
