Pineapple in the BEESR – Maximizing Juice

We cooked a pineapple in our Big Easy Electric Smoker and Roaster (BEESR) about a week ago.  When we did, we had bought two pineapples from the store.  The second one had been sitting around the kitchen ever since.  It was starting to get more and more yellowish/orangeish colored so last night we figured we better do something with it.  Off to the BEESR!

We wiped down the inside of the BEESR with vegetable oil using a washcloth, and turned the power setting to 15.  Then we chopped off the green leaf thingies on top with a knife and put the pineapple in the bottom of the basket.  After the BEESR had been running for about 15 minutes, we put the basket in the BEESR.

After running for 45 minutes on power setting 15, we took the basket out and placed it on a cookie sheet.  Then we used heat resistant gloves to remove the pineapple and placed the pineapple itself on a cookie sheet.

We put the pineapple on it’s side and chopped the top off with a knife.  Then we used a pineapple corer to get out most of the good parts inside  (bought the pineapple corer at the grocery store but not all of them carry them.  Similar to this one.)  This time, since the pineapple was a bit older, it didn’t cut the pineapple out quite as well as it had the first one.   We decided to cut the side off in order to get the last bits out of the bottom.  When we did, a good bit of juice came pouring out onto the cookie sheet.  Good thing we didn’t do this on the counter!

Once we had gotten the rest of the pineapple out of the bottom we took the cookie sheet and poured the juice into a cup through a strainer (metal mesh kind of thing you can get at the grocery store or places like Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, etc).  My wife and daughter said it was the best pineapple juice they had ever had. That gave me an idea.

We still had the rest of the pineapple rind just sitting there in a couple of pieces on the cookie sheet.  A lot of it still looked pretty juicy.  So I got a gallon sized zip-lock bag and put the rest of the pineapple parts along with the top we had cut off into the bag.  The thought was to use a rolling pin to see how much more juice I could get out of it.  Turns out the rolling pin didn’t do that great of a job.  Just grabbing the pineapple through the bag and squishing it did a lot better than the rolling pin.  Once I finished squishing it, I opened about an inch of the bag at the side and poured the extra juice through the strainer into a cup.  We got about an extra 8 ounces this way!  And to think we just threw the last pineapple rind away.  Won’t be doing that again.  🙂

Result: Another really tasty pineapple with almost twice as much juice as the first one by squeezing the rind.

Note to self: Try not to let them get quite so ripe.  They’re a tad better if you use them earlier.

Pineapple in the BEESR? Why Not?

After the great success with the Brisket in the Big Easy Electric Smoker and Roaster (BEESR), we decided to give a pineapple a try.  Why you may ask?  Why not!  I think I saw a video of this being done somewhere but I can’t seem to find it.  Perhaps the idea came to me in a dream.  Not sure.  Regardless, we decided to give it a shot.

We started by rubbing down the inside of the BEESR with vegetable oil.  (it’s just the stuff from the grocery store in a bottle that says vegetable oil).  We pour a little on a washcloth and wipe the insides til it has a nice thin coat.  Then we turned it on and waited about 15 minutes for it to warm up.

Next we cut the top parts off of the pineapple with a knife.  Not the top of the pineapple it’self, just the leaf things coming out the top.  Not sure if we need to do that or not but we didn’t want them to burn.

Next, we put the whole thing in the bottom of the basket and put the basket in the BEESR.  We didn’t set a target temperature.  We set a timer for 45 minutes.

When the timer went off, we took the basket out of the BEESR and removed the pineapple with heat proof gloves.  Then, using one of the heat proof gloves, we cut the top off the actual pineapple with a knife.  We then used a pineapple corer to remove the good stuff from the pineapple.  This isn’t the exact one we used, but it’s quite similar and shows how it works.  Once the pineapple has been roasted, it’s fairly easy to use the corer on it.

That turned out the best pineapple I’ve ever had.  I don’t have any pictures of this one because we didn’t get started until midnight.  Hopefully I’ll get some pictures of the next one we do.  Wow was that thing good.  Sooo easy to do.  Loving this BEESR.