Ingredient

Calamansi

Calamansi is a small round citrus, green outside and orange inside, that sits somewhere between a lime and a mandarin — sour, fragrant and slightly sweeter and rounder than a lime. In the Philippines it is on every table, in the way lemon is in Europe, and it is used on almost everything.

What it is and what it tastes like

Calamansi — also spelled kalamansi, and known as calamondin in horticulture — is a small citrus, roughly the size of a large grape or a small plum. The skin is thin and green ripening to yellow-orange; the flesh inside is orange even when the outside is green, which surprises people.

The flavour is distinctly sour, but rounder and more fragrant than a lime — there is a mandarin-like sweetness behind the acid, and an aromatic quality closer to a bergamot or a yuzu than to a Persian lime. It is less harsh and less bitter than lime.

The whole fruit is used. The juice is squeezed, the zest is aromatic, and the peel is sometimes included, which contributes a pleasant bitterness.

How it is used in Filipino cooking

• As a table condiment. A small dish of halved calamansi is set out with almost any meal, to be squeezed over whatever is in front of you.
• With soy sauce, as toyomansi — the standard dipping sauce, sometimes with chilli. Grilled meat, fried fish, lumpia, everything.
• In sawsawan generally — the family of Filipino dipping sauces, most of which involve calamansi in some proportion.
• On pancit and other noodle dishes, squeezed over at the table.
• In marinades, especially for grilled pork and chicken, often with soy and garlic.
• As a juice or cordial, hot or cold, with honey or sugar. Calamansi juice is a national soft drink.
• In desserts — pie, tarts, sorbet — where it works exactly as lime or lemon would.
• In kinilaw, the Filipino cured raw fish dish, alongside vinegar.

Getting hold of it

Fresh fruit

Filipino and Southeast Asian grocers, seasonally. Small, thin-skinned and easily squashed, so they do not travel or keep especially well.

Frozen

Whole frozen calamansi is common in Asian supermarket freezers and is a good option — thaw and squeeze.

Bottled juice

Widely available. Quality varies considerably; some are concentrate with added sugar. Check the label.

Substitutes

A mixture of lime and mandarin or orange juice, roughly three to one, is the usual approximation. Lime alone is sharper and more bitter; lemon alone lacks the perfume.

Growing it

Calamondin is grown as an ornamental in Europe and the fruit is edible. If you have one on a windowsill, it is the real thing.

Season, ripeness and growing it

Calamansi fruits more or less year-round in the tropics, with peaks rather than a single season, which is part of why it is so embedded in everyday Filipino cooking — there is nearly always some.

Ripeness runs from green through yellow-green to orange, and the fruit is used at every stage. Greener fruit is sharper and more acidic; riper fruit is rounder and sweeter and more aromatic. Filipino cooks generally use the greener ones for dipping sauces and the riper ones for drinks, and neither is wrong for either.

It also grows well as a container plant in a conservatory or a bright indoor spot in Britain, where it is sold as calamondin and marketed as an ornamental citrus. The fruit on those plants is the real thing, and a single well-kept tree produces a genuinely useful quantity — which is by some distance the cheapest route to fresh calamansi outside Southeast Asia.

Common questions