'Tastes like chestnut': Korean variety show host cuts durian in half and eats husk

Durians — love them or hate them, every self-respecting South East Asian knows the proper way to eat them.

We thought we had seen it all when Americans served up jackfruit sliced like watermelons but this Korean variety show just one-upped them by butchering durians and ruffling the feathers of durian-lovers with their haphazard fruit-picking.

Law of the Jungle, a reality show which features celebrities hunting and foraging for food in remote locations, landed in the Mergui Archipelago in Myanmar for a recent episode where they promptly committed a series of durian-related faux pas.

The show's transgressions against the "King of Fruits" went viral on Malaysian social media after a fan of the show took to Twitter on Oct 2 to put the cast on blast.

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In a tweet that has since been retweeted over 13,000 times, the fan posted a clip of comedian Kim Byung-man digging his fingers into a durian that was sliced cleanly in half, seeds and all.

For the uninitiated, the proper way to open a durian is to pry the fruit open and scoop out the pods of flesh whole.

Despite the sliced seeds and mushy flesh, the cast seemed to enjoy the taste of the fruit and marvelled at how it didn't smell. Yoon San-ha, a member of the K-pop group Astro, even remarked, "It's tasty! It's like pineapple."

But that wasn't all. Durian-lovers were also left cringing when (G)I-DLE member Song Yu Qi, actor Ahn Chang-hwan, and actress Han Bo-reum chanced upon a durian in the forest and decided to have a taste — of its husk.

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As the trio munched on the durian husk, Chang-hwan commented, "Why is it so good? Why does it taste like chestnut?"

To her credit, Yu Qi expressed some doubt, saying, "Is it really durian? Durian doesn't taste like this."

The threesome then tried to climb a durian tree to pluck more fruits, not knowing that all of the durians on the tree were unripe.

The reason? Durians usually fall from the trees once they are ripe.

In fact, lingering beneath durian trees like they did could have resulted in serious injuries if they had been struck by a falling durian.

Incredulous netizens bemoaned the waste of perfectly good durians and made fun of the cast's durian-eating technique.

While it may have been an honest mistake on the cast's part, it is not the show's first slip-up.

Law of the Jungle landed itself in trouble with a Thai national park in July after a cast member allegedly hunted and cooked giant clams which were protected under Thai law.

kimberlylim@asiaone.com