CURRY TREES IN VIETNAM

This curry variety is native to the tropics of the Americas, is a tropical tree, can live up to 50 years, small tree, 4-10m high, many branches.

© Explore Vietnam by motorbike tours – VIETNAMRIDER® – since 1999

Unlike the common Indian curry variety, the trees have pink flowers and bright red thorny fruits, containing red seeds. The fruit dries and hardens into a brown capsule.

The fruit is not edible, but the seeds have many uses. The curry seeds are used to color foods, such as butter, fish and cooking oils. 

Not only the field of food but also cosmetics and pharmaceuticals in some countries such as the United States, Brazil also extracted Bixin pigment in the curry seeds to create a safe color for products. 

In addition to taking seeds to color foods, plant parts have many therapeutic effects such as seeds as dewormers. 

© Explore Vietnam by motorbike tours – VIETNAMRIDER® – since 1999

Folk experience in Colombia, people pound curry seeds to treat snakebites and eliminate phlegm. Leaves are used to treat dysentery, fever, malaria, and some other parts of the plant as medicine against heatstroke, tonsillitis, burns, pleurisy, diarrhea, and dysentery. 

In Vietnam, the curry seeds are reduced by housewives in hot peanut oil, coconut oil or lard, filtered to get a mixture of colors to cook foods such as curry, rice noodles, stir-fry.

© Explore Vietnam by motorbike tours – VIETNAMRIDER® – since 1999