Cooking with Pineapple

Sweet and sour fruits can add a tasty boost to your cooking. In Asian cuisines, coconut, papaya, mango and pineapple are common ingredients for a myriad of delicious wonders. Every fruit has its signature flavour when cooked, and brings a unique touch to a dish. The pineapple stands out with a few flavourful advantages:

Stays Juicy & Firm

No matter how you cook it, the pineapple retains its natural juicy insides and texture, as well as its fruity taste and aroma. Blends well with all kinds of sauces and flavour combos, and evens out the taste of stronger ingredients.

The Thai Pineapple Fried Rice is defined by the fruit’s juicy sweet sour flavour, boosting the tastes of seafood bits like prawn flesh, while balancing the spicy and savoury flavours. You can even use the pineapple’s hard-shell skin as a bowl, adding an extra aroma and tropical feel.

Tenderizes Meats

The pineapple has a natural enzyme called Bromelain. When cooked, the fruit’s juices blend into seafood and meats, and the Bromelain tenderizes their textures.

Such as in the Chinese sweet-sour pork. A rich savoury marinade paired with a sauce blend that features sweet, sour, salty and spicy flavours. The pineapple softens the pork and brings a boost to the combo with its juicy taste in every bite. Savour it with our classic recipe. Got an air fryer? Try this recipe with a delicious egg coating on the pork!

Flavour Balancer

For rich and complex flavoured cuisines like Thai cooking, the pineapple’s sweet-sour juice becomes a natural balancer for the various taste combos. In the sumptuous Thai Red Curry Duck, the pineapple tempers the fiery ingredients and adds a refreshing fruity sweetness to the zesty, creamy and umami flavours.

Appetizing Colour

Besides the sweet fruit flavour and texture, the vibrant amber of pineapple is also an appetizing booster to almost any dish, especially when the other ingredients are of a darker colour. Such as in this Thai-style Deep Fried Whole Fish. The pineapple adds a splash of delightful mouth-watering freshness to the fish’s umami brown.

Sweet Fruity Jam

You can puree the pineapple flesh into a tasty jam, which makes a delightful core ingredient for Asian pastries – like the fun and yummy pineapple tart, or the fluffy pineapple cake. Want something more exotic? Cut the pineapple into cubes and blend with sugar, salt and cinnamon to make the buttery Taiwanese pineapple cookie roll.

More Pineapple Goodies

The pineapple is a versatile, delicious addition to your flavouring repertoire, and packs a tonne of wholesome goodness too. Come check out all the yummy Asian recipes you can cook with it!