José Andrés Says This Native Fruit Is One of America’s Best-Kept Food Secrets
“It’s the most American ingredient that America is highly unaware of.”
Published on August 10, 2026
The ingredients and dishes locals take for granted can feel revelatory to someone experiencing them for the first time. Local ingredients also often reveal the character of a place — and sometimes it takes an outsider to recognize just how remarkable they are. That was the case when we asked chef José Andrés to name his favorite American ingredient since moving from Spain to the U.S. nearly 35 years ago.
“There are many, many American ingredients I love,” Andrés said when we sat down together before the grand opening of Bazaar Meat inside the Waldorf Astoria in Washington D.C. “Abalone, oysters, uni from Santa Barbara, blue crabs in Maryland, Dungeness crab on the West Coast, the list goes on.”
But then he paused. “Have you ever had pawpaws?” he asked. “Ninety-nine point nine percent of America doesn’t have a clue what the pawpaw is.”
“They are these incredible fruits that grow only in the wild in the eastern U.S.,” he added.
A relative of soursop and cherimoya, pawpaws are the largest edible fruit native to the U.S. They grow wild throughout much of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, and are only ripe for a short time.
“They are almost like a small mango with greenish-black skin and yellow flesh with shiny dark seeds. They have a beautiful tropical flavor, which is so amazing to find in the middle of the forest in October,” the chef continued.
Andrés uses this lesser-known American ingredient in everything from salsas to curries, where he likes pawpaws a little under-ripened before he cubes them and cooks them along with the other ingredients. He also uses pawpaws in savory stuffings. But when they’re ripe, he’ll eat them straight from the tree.
The delicate fruit bruises easily and has a short harvest window, so pawpaws rarely make it to grocery stores. If you’re lucky enough to find one — typically at a farmers market — eat only the flesh. Its seeds, peel, leaves, and bark are not safe to consume.
“Flavors of mango, banana, and citrus,” Andrés described, “they taste like you should be eating them on an island somewhere. It’s the most American ingredient that America is highly unaware of.”