Jackfruit Around the World: A Davis Alt Protein Cooking Competition with Chef Nina Curtis and Karana

On the evening of May 22, 2026, five student teams gathered in the Robert Mondavi Institute's Food Innovation Lab with one shared ingredient, KARANA GROUND jackfruit, and five very different ideas about what to do with it. 

The Jackfruit Around the World Cooking Competition, co-hosted by the Davis Alternative Protein Project and plant-based food company Karana, marked the final Davis Alt Pro event of the quarter and the first organized under incoming club president Arjun Neralla. He described it as the kind of event he loves most, "collaborative, experimental, and centered around food people genuinely want to eat." 

The Judges, the Ingredient, and the Stakes

Judging the competition was Chef Nina Curtis, a plant-based chef with more than 25 years of experience. She has trained at the Living Light Culinary Institute and the Natural Gourmet Institute and built deep expertise in plant-based cooking. In June 2023, she made history as the first guest chef ever to curate an all-plant-based menu for a White House state dinner, cooking a three-course meal for 400 guests in honor of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

Food has been part of her life from the beginning. Her father is a chef, and she learned to cook at age eight alongside both her parents. Her path into plant-based cuisine began during her career as a professional bodybuilder, when she discovered the health benefits of a whole food plant-based lifestyle and never looked back. 

Chef Curtis made the evening feel collaborative. Students flagged her down throughout to ask about seasoning, texture, and technique, and she reminded them more than once that becoming a chef is a lifelong process.

Also judging were Dr. Carsten Carstens, Chief Scientific Officer at Karana, Kara Leong, Executive Director of iCamp at UC Davis, and Bryan Wijaya, a UC Davis Ph.D. student and the club's events coordinator.

All five teams cooked with KARANA GROUND, Karana's ground jackfruit meat, a minimally processed product sourced from young jackfruit grown by small farmers in Sri Lanka. It can be shaped into patties, meatballs, or any other ground-meat format, and cooks similarly to ground pork. 

Cartsens explained that jackfruit is less commoditized and more climate-resilient than most plant-based proteins on the market, and Karana has built this product on the premise of providing an easier way for people to use this great ingredient. 

Five Teams, Five Culinary Traditions

The five teams approached jackfruit from dramatically different directions.

Two teams chose Filipino lumpia. The first, Lucas, Lillian, Robinson, Isabella, and Emma, seasoned the jackfruit with soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and MSG, deep-fried until golden, and served with lime wedges and sweet chili sauce. They proudly said their recipe was convincing enough that some of their roommates who sampled the dish beforehand didn't realize the filling was plant-based. 

The second lumpia team, Ember, Kirk, Olivia M., Warren, and Olivia A., took a more personal approach inspired by Warren's grandmother's cooking, pairing lumpia served on a banana leaf with a green papaya salad. The judges called them especially moist and comforting.

Ian, Lindsay, Alexandra, Molly, and Gordon tackled a Turkish döner kebab, placing jackfruit into a traditionally meat-heavy dish. Their spice mix included black pepper, cumin, oregano, garlic powder, and Kashmiri pepper, and was served with tahini sauce and fresh vegetables. The goal, as their slide put it, was to taste "just like Nick The Greek." 

Carstens, originally from Germany, where döner has become a cultural staple through Turkish immigration, used the moment to reflect on how cuisines evolve through migration and exchange. He noted that jackfruit's traditional heat comes from black pepper rather than chile peppers, a detail that carries its own history of trade routes and cultural adaptation.

Sandamali and Gina prepared Sri Lankan jackfruit cutlets seasoned with turmeric, tamarind, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, and curry leaves, mashed together with potato and served with tea. Cutlets are a popular finger food in Sri Lanka and are traditionally eaten at evening tea time. They were crispy on the outside, soft and spicy inside. 

For Sandamali, a Ph.D. student in animal science, the dish was personal. She adapted the recipe from her country’s cuisine, replacing meat with jackfruit while preserving the flavor and structure she grew up with.

The Dish That Won the Night

Simon, Miranda, Angela, and Mat made Jamaican-style jackfruit patties served with a sorrel-hibiscus-ginger dipping sauce and coconut cream loosely inspired by tzatziki. Simon, a chemistry graduate student who designed the dish, described the patties as "bike-friendly food," not just street food, but food built for moving, gathering, and conversation.

The judges stepped outside to deliberate. After an intense wait, they returned and declared the cutlets the second-place runner-up. Carstens called them genuinely authentic, saying they held up to anything he had eaten while traveling through Sri Lanka. 

The winner of the night was also the most technically impressive. The Jamaican-style patties won over the judges with their texture and taste. Curtis praised the pastry dough, calling it "so good and so flaky." The team's practical tip of the night was to pulse the KARANA GROUND in a food processor to achieve a finer-ground meat texture.  

Curtis helped announce the result with visible enthusiasm and said, "The food was delicious. I'll sleep very well tonight."

The winning team took home a full case of Karana's jackfruit potsticker product, alongside a plant-based food basket donated by the Davis Food Co-op, a community-owned grocery cooperative in downtown Davis. The competition was made possible in part by iCamp, UC Davis's Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein, which supports research and innovation in plant-based and cultivated foods across the university.

Keep the Fire in the Belly

Every dish that evening treated jackfruit not as a substitute, but as an ingredient in its own right, one capable of carrying culinary traditions from the Philippines, Jamaica, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. 

One team put it plainly, "Vegan diets should feel seductive, not sad. The words vegan and diet should not be synonymous." Their dish, like most others that night, was simultaneously gluten-free, vegan, kosher, halal, and decadent. 

Carstens framed the competition within Karana's larger mission of taking a systems-level approach to plant-based food that starts with a great ingredient, works with small farmers, and makes it more accessible for people to cook great food. 

Curtis closed the evening by connecting the culinary principle of mise en place to something larger. "Mise your life," she told the room, “that is the best way to succeed in the kitchen and beyond.” Then, smiling at the students gathered around her, she said she was leaving with more fire in her belly than when she arrived and encouraged the student competitors to “keep the fire in your bellies.” 

To learn more visit: The Davis Alt Protein Project, Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein (iCAMP), and KARANA

Kaylianne Jordan is a viticulture and enology graduate at UC Davis pursuing her master's degree. She has a background in culinary arts and a passion for sustainable farming and enjoys exploring the connections between agriculture, winemaking, and community. Outside of college, she loves trying out new recipes, and discovering local food spots.