14 Ways You Should Be Eating Lychee

In Western cuisines, the lychee is an under-appreciated fruit. As lychees tend to grow in subtropical areas like Southeast Asia and India, they're usually ignored in favor of more commonplace fruits in the United States, and it can be difficult to find them sometimes in more mainstream supermarkets and retailers. If you can find perfectly in-season lychees, though, you may be presented with a new problem: What on earth do you do with them? The lychee's floral aroma and delicate, slightly rose-like taste can seem difficult to pair with foods and beverages without dominating things, and it can sometimes feel like they need to be reserved for certain combinations at the expense of others.

However, that's really not the case. When they're used right, lychees can be both a stand-out ingredient in your dish and a complement to the other flavors present. Whether you're using fresh or canned lychees, their bright flavor makes them the perfect choice for sorbets, smoothies, cakes, jams, and cocktails. They can also be used in slightly more unexpected ways, with the humble lychee being a perfect fit for salads, salsas, and stir-fries.

Here's the thing about smoothies: They're boring. Tasty, but boring. The reason for this is that we just end up putting the same old stuff in them time and time again: Your usual couple of handfuls of frozen fruit, maybe a banana or two, and some protein. That might make for a perfectly passable drink that's bursting with nutrition, but not something you particularly look forward to.

Well, next time you make a smoothie, elevate it with the flavors of canned lychees and thank us afterward. Canned lychees have a bright, tart, floral flavor that cuts through the density of a smoothie and makes it taste so much more refreshing and lively. It also adds a fragrant aroma that takes the edge off any dairy notes you've added to your drink, which can sometimes dominate. Lychees are really versatile enough to go with any other fruit flavors, so you don't have to worry too much about which ones you combine them with. Plus, if your canned lychees are packed in syrup, you can also add a little into your smoothie to sweeten it up — but bear in mind that the fruit is likely going to be sweet enough already.

Lychees in a salad? Trust us on this one, guys, it really works. Adding lychees to a salad might not be the first thing you think to do with them, but they can add a slightly acidic, bright sweetness that goes super well with other fresh ingredients. Both fresh and canned lychees can be added to a salad, with the latter adding slightly more sugariness and the fresh kind having somewhat of a more bitter note.

One of the best things about adding lychees to salads is their size. Because the fruit comes in little predetermined bitesize portions, you don't even need to cut them up: You can just tumble them straight into your salad. The fruit is versatile enough to do with a host of different salad styles, but when you're building your dish, we'd recommend thinking about contrast. Pairing lychees with radishes and salad leaves like rocket and kale can be a good move, as their pepperiness can be both offset and amplified by the sweet fruit. Pairing onions with lychees is also a good move, as their tart, sugary notes can subdue the onion's acrid bite.

Lychees are perfect in desserts — but you can be a lot more creative than just plopping them in a bowl and serving them fresh, folks. By blending lychees with a few other ingredients, you can make a refreshing, tasty sorbet. All you have to do is throw some canned lychees in a food processor with some lime juice, sugar, and the syrup from the lychee can and pulse them until they're totally puréed. Pour the mix into a container and then freeze it until solid, before chunking it up and processing it once more with some egg white.

Once the two are mixed together, the egg white will give the sorbet mix a creamy, rich texture. After you freeze it once more it'll be ready to scoop into bowls and serve. You can then top the sorbet with a few shavings of lime zest for extra color and fragrance. Remember that you can add other fruits to the mix, too. Try combining your lychees with mango for a sorbet with a touch more sweetness, but which still has that fragrant, floral edge. Alternatively, add in some pineapple for a boost of sourness.

All too often, salsa leans into tart, slightly savory flavors. Now, there's nothing wrong with that — it's designed to be paired with savory foods, after all, and so those gently savory notes help the salsa to cohere with your main dish, while the tart tastes give contrast. Unfortunately, though, salsas can frequently end up being fairly uninspiring, without any subtlety and nearly enough sweetness.

Using lychee in your salsas can help on both fronts. Lychee can give salsa a somewhat flowery fragrance that helps to lighten it and create a new dynamic in your food, while its gentle sweetness helps to deliver a further flavor contrast. Its bitesize nature means that it doesn't take much work to prepare for salsa, either: You can just cut them into halves or quarters.

If you're looking to amplify sweetness, we'd recommend going for canned lychees, as their syrup-packed nature means that they're already plenty sugary. For more tartness and a slight earthiness, go for fresh lychees. Plus, if you don't have either to hand, you can also amp up a fruity salsa with some lychee-infused balsamic vinegar.

If you haven't had a lychee cocktail, you haven't lived. Lychees are one of our favorite ingredients to add to a cocktail, thanks to their subtlety and heady aroma. A dash of lychee syrup or juice or a lychee garnish can help cut through the acridity of spirit-based cocktails like martinis, and elsewhere it can lift up other fruity flavors added to your drink. Besides that, the scent of lychee just has an elegance to it that works in cocktails, making them taste and smell way fancier — and who doesn't want that?

The best thing is that lychees fit into so many different cocktails, too. You can whip up a lychee mojito by adding lychee syrup to your regular recipe — or you can make things even stronger by using a lychee liqueur like Kwai Feh. Alternatively, make a twist on a Moscow mule, and whip up a lychee mule instead by adding both lychee liqueur and puréed lychee. To make a lychee martini, combine vodka, lychee liqueur, lychee syrup, and vermouth. With all of these, don't forget to use lychee as a garnish; it'll look great, and it'll give you something to snack on at the end of your drink.

What do you add to your stir fries? Probably the same old stuff, right? Onions, peppers, your protein of choice, maybe some soy sauce: It's a reliable meal, but it sure is boring and one-note. Well, one of the quickest and most effective ways to mix up a stir fry is to add some unexpected ingredients — and we'd recommend going for lychees and green curry paste.

The combination of these two ingredients is pretty special, folks. The green curry paste adds spicy, herbal, sour notes, which could overwhelm any stir fry you're making — but the lychees help to lighten things up and balance the paste's intensity, adding a note of sweetness and a perfumed fragrance. A dash of coconut milk brings everything together, smoothing out the curry paste's impact and lifting up the lychees.

You don't have to reserve your lychees for just a green curry stir fry, though. You can really add them into any stir fry you want, even the most basic midweek variety. They're a quick and simple way to make your dinner way more special and exciting, while also cutting through the insistent savoriness that stir fries usually have.

Panna cotta can seem like a complicated thing to make, but in reality, it's not that difficult. Plus, when you make it yourself, you get to add all of your favorite flavors to it — like lychee. Lychee works well in panna cotta thanks to its floral aroma and delicate taste, which gives the dessert a lightness that it can sometimes otherwise lack. It's best to use fresh lychees in panna cotta, as the canned ones can sometimes taste a bit dull, and in this dessert you really want the flavors to feel vibrant and colorful.

Adding lychees to panna cotta is easy: You just purée them with the rest of your ingredients until everything is smooth, before combining the mixture with gelatin. Don't forget to reserve some lychees for a topping, too. On that note, you don't need to make a panna cotta from scratch at all to enjoy lychees with it. You can just buy a store-bought one and jazz it up by popping a few lychees on top.

If you haven't tried lychee jam, you haven't lived. Lychee jam is an elegant take on fruit spread, which swaps the insistent sugariness of regular jam for something more subtle and elegant. Lychee jam has a floral note to it that makes it way more refreshing and light, while its tartness stops it from being too sweet. It's perfect on buttered toast or dolloped on top of oatmeal, where it can cut through its density and richness.

Naturally, though, lychee jam can be pretty tricky to find in stores: It's fairly niche, after all. That's why we recommend making it yourself. Look, we know what you're thinking — but trust us, it's not as hard as you think. All you have to do is blend some peeled lychees into a chunky purée, before cooking them with some sugar and lime juice (you'll need to use twice the amount of fruit to sugar). Once you've simmered the mixture for about 15 minutes, you then just let it cool, during which it will thicken slightly. Once fully cooled, transfer your jam to a glass jar, and it'll keep for a good couple of weeks.

For the most part, cake is pretty dense. You can't really get away from that: This is a dessert made with flour and eggs, and even if you end up making the most delicate crumb around, there's no getting away from its base ingredients. In our opinion, one of the best ways to lighten up cake is through additional ingredients that create a sense of freshness – and lychees can do just that.

The flavor of lychee works especially well with buttercream-based cakes, as they add brightness to what can otherwise be a fairly heavy addition. Mixing a few dashes of lychee syrup into your buttercream can make it taste and smell way more refreshing. Lychees also make an excellent filling in a cake, as they can provide a lovely, squidgy texture that contrasts the heaviness of the crumb, while also adding some tart flavor. You should always pair lychees with flavors that work well with them: If you want to go hard on the perfumed edge, try combining them with rosewater. Oh, and don't forget to keep a few fresh lychees on the side to top your cake with, too.

When summer rolls around, there's only one drink you should be making: A good old-fashioned lychee soda. Lychee and soda are the perfect pairing, with the gentle, fragrant flavor of lychees working to perfume the soda without sweetening it too much. The soda, conversely, helps to lift the lychee flavor, leaning into the fruit's natural lightness and slight tartness.

To make a lychee soda, it really is as simple as mixing the carbonated beverage with the juice from a lychee can. This juice is naturally sweet and flavorful, giving the drink immediate flavor without overpowering it. If your lychees are packed in syrup, adding a dash of this into your soda water will also flavor it, while simultaneously providing it with much-needed sweetness. If you're working with fresh lychees and you want an extra note of sugariness, you can always whip up a simple syrup by combining water and sugar, stirring the two over heat until the sugar is completely dissolved, before pouring it into your soda.

Additionally, don't forget that this is just the start: You can add any further flavors or ingredients you want into a lychee soda. If you want to make it alcoholic, try mixing it with vodka or gin. To keep it non-alcoholic but to boost its fragrance, pop in some mint. Oh, and don't forget to garnish the drink with whole lychees, of course.

Fruit salads are so often so boring, guys. More often than not, we make them with the same old ingredients, which are reliably sweet and tart but which don't exactly set tastebuds on fire. The solution is to think outside the box, and opting for lychees is one way to do this. Lychees give a real sense of freshness to fruit salads which stops them tasting flat and dull. Their rose-like fragrance adds a totally different scent to the dish (which we think makes it way more delicious), and their slightly crisp texture works well with the softer and harder fruits in your salad, providing a middle ground between the two.

Plus, because lychees are bitesize already, they really don't need much more preparation when taken out of a can: Just slice them in half, or leave them whole if you like. As for what fruits they go with — well, they kinda fit with everything. If you want to keep things tropical and sprightly, opt to mix your lychees with mangoes and pineapple. For something a bit more gentle and wintry, pop your lychees into a fruit salad centered around pears (which are a natural fit with lychee flavor), clementines, and apples.

For most of us, braising starts and ends with meat. It's one of the best ways to produce a tender piece of protein that's full of flavor, while simultaneously filling your kitchen with comforting, homely ingredients. However, it's definitely the case that braised meat can err on the heavy side, and unless you add in ingredients that cut through the intensity of the flavors, it can end up a little flat and dense.

That's why we think throwing in lychees with braised meat is such a cool move. Lychees add both a lightness and a sweetness to braised meat dishes, which can complement the savory notes of the protein and cut through its powerful flavors. Plus, the squidgy bites dotted around the meat serve as a delightful textural contrast to the main event.

It's important to note that lychee won't go with every type of meat, though. We'd recommend avoiding using it with beef or lamb, as its gentle taste will just be lost. Instead, opt to use your lychees in braised chicken or pork dishes, ideally those that are centered around lighter soy-based flavors.

Whipping up fruit punch? You need lychee. Adding this fruit is one of the quickest ways to make your fruit punch sing with flavor, and to provide it with a subtle fragrance that makes it way more drinkable and delicious. The problem with fruit punch is that it can quickly become a little bit overly sweet and sour, which can make it a bit tough to keep chugging down. Lychees lift fruit punch out of that territory, adding a milder flavor and scent note that keeps it light and refreshing, instead of a chore to drink.

To add lychee to fruit punch, we'd recommend trying to find a water-canned version of the fruit, or using the fresh kind. While you can use lychees packed in syrup, these will make your punch overly sweet; using those packed in water will freshen it up. You can add them to pretty much any fruit punch you're making, but avoid only adding a couple and then overwhelming their flavor with more insistent fruits like mango and pineapple — that kinda defeats the point of using them in the first place. Remember that you can use lychees in either nonalcoholic or alcoholic fruit punches, too, and combining fresh lychees, lychee liqueur, elderflower liqueur, and citrus fruits will give you a drinkable crowd-pleaser that will have your guests feeling merry.

One of the joys of ceviche is its sheer lightness. This is created by the combination of raw seafood and citrus, which gently denatures the fish you're using, essentially "cooking" it. However, ceviche can also suffer from being a little bit one-note and relentlessly acidic, at the expense of any real fragrance or dynamism. The solution? Use lychee.

Putting lychee in ceviche adds a totally different note into the mix, with its fragrant nature cutting through the salinity of the fish and the acidity of the lemon and lime juice. The fruit also adds a lovely sweetness, which creates a further level of flavor. Plus, its soft texture works well with the other ingredients, complementing without distracting. Make sure you add your lychees after your fish has had time to chill with the acids being used so that their flavor isn't diminished and so they don't get in the way of the denaturing process. We'd also recommend mixing in some chopped cilantro for earthiness.