The Pineapple Plan

I’m allergic to raw pineapple, so I can only eat it once it’s processed in some way (canned, dried, or cooked in a dish).

Store-bought dried pineapple rings are my weakness. You think you are being healthy when you eat them because they’re deceptively in the shape of the pineapple rings they once were. In reality, they’re basically pure sugar. Hence, I love them.

I need to cut back on my sugar consumption, however. I decided to dry my own pineapple rings, now that I have a dehydrator. Pineapples can be intimidating for the uninitiated though. So spiky.

Enter the Internet. After purchasing my organically grown pineapple earlier this week, I watched a video on what the heck to do with it to get to those juicy yellow rings. Here’s the video I watched.

I learned a lot, including how to pick a good pineapple. Fortunately, I just happened to purchase a good one:

The scales are all the same size and still green.

I cut off the ends and the scales, as instructed by the girl in the video. I wanted to cut the pineapple into rings, because that’s more fun.

Now, to get the core out of each slice. I didn’t have a little circular cookie cutter like the girl in the video. I dug through the supply of cookie cutters I’ve inherited — plenty of gingerbread men, even a cactus. I eventually settled on a little heart that was the exact right size. I also experimented with using a paring knife to core some of the slices. Neither was all that easy because the slices were so slippery with juice.

Cute!

Once all of the slices were cored, I put them into the dehydrator and it’s been cranking all day. One of the slices fell apart when I cored it and I’ve been using it to test the done-ness of the pieces every few hours. They’re super yummy. They’re holding onto their moisture a little too well, so I think I’m going to need to refrigerate the slices when I take them out of the dehydrator.

Each of my dehydrated slices contains about half of the sugar of the off-the-shelf dried pineapple rings. They’re just as tasty too. The only bummer is that I got just a handful of slices out of the one pineapple.

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