Here's how I cut a pineapple with minimal waste, grill it, and make a quick salsa for chicken tacos with a goat cheese sour cream sauce.
How to cut a pineapple
If you can find some good pre-cut pineapples, by all means save yourself some time and skip to the grilling section below. Otherwise, here's how my dad taught me to do this. First, cut the top and bottoms off so you can stand the pineapple up flat on your cutting board. Then thinly slice the skin off in small sections, leaving behind the little "eyes." The outer section of the flesh is apparently the sweetest, so try to minimize the amount you take off here. Now cut out the "eyes" that remain. See how they sort of line up diagonally? Find a diagonal section, and cut a V-shaped wedge out to remove the eyes. Do this all around. I'm going to grill these so I cut circular pieces and removed the middle section with a biscuit cutter. If you don't need the pieces to be round, cut down the middle into quarters and cut the middle out that way. I personally really like that middle section but a lot of people find it tough so I usually remove it.
How to grill pineapple
Preheat your grill on high, lightly oil the grates, and grill the pineapple pieces on low for about 3-4 minutes per side. That's it! I don't put anything on the pineapple.
How to make pineapple salsa
Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 cups grilled pineapple, diced small
1/4 cup red onion, diced small
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 jalapeño, diced small (optional)
Mix everything in a medium-sized bowl and enjoy! The only sodium is whatever occurs naturally in the ingredients so the entire recipe has less than 10 mg of sodium.
How to eat pineapple salsa
You can eat this salsa on anything but here's an idea: try it on a taco with a sour cream/goat cheese sauce. I love the combination of pineapples and goat cheese so here's what I did. I took small corn tortillas (20 mg sodium/3 tortillas), about 4 ounces of grilled chicken breast seasoned with just olive oil and Lawry's seasoned pepper (50 mg sodium/4 ounces), a 50-50 mixture of Roth's plain chèvre goat cheese (75 mg sodium/ounce) and sour cream (15 mg sodium/2 tablespoons), pineapple salsa, and topped it with some Trader Joe's sodium-free hot sauce. Less than 100 mg of sodium for this serving and so good!
