Photo: Claire Lower, Graphic: Ian Moore
Pinkglow® pineapples are an odd fruit. They are not of the natural world, but engineered (and trademarked) by Del Monte. They get their rosy hue from lycopene, a pigment that occurs naturally in watermelon and tomatoes (but not pineapples, hence the engineering). Some people find the appearance off-putting, but I love products that live in the uncanny valley, even if it’s a pineapple that looks kind of like frozen salmon.
These Franken-fruits aren’t cheap—they can run as high at $15 per pineapple—but I found them at my local Fred Meyer (a Kroger-affiliated store) for five bucks, so I snagged a couple.
It was the juiciest pineapple I’d ever sliced into, and had a sweeter, more floral, and less acidic flavor than a traditional pineapple. I didn’t want to waste one bit of it.
My usual pineapple scrap mitigation strategy involves a lot of gin, but I don’t drink all that much anymore, so I decided to chuck the tough, fibrous core into my expensive water cup, a cup I purchased in the hopes of becoming more hydrated. (It’s working, kind of.) Within half an hour, the core of the fruit had infused my plain, boring water with the juicy, fruity goodness of pineapple, which made it much more fun to drink.
The best tools for coring a pineapple:
You don’t have to use a pink pineapple core, however. Any color will do. The nice thing about pineapple cores is that they’re already the right shape and size for slipping into a water bottle. If the mouth of your bottle is truly narrow, you can halve or quarter the core vertically to help it fit.
You can also freeze the cores to chill and flavor your water at the same time. (They’ll stay good in the freezer for at least three months, so chuck them in a freezer bag as you butcher pineapples, and use them at your leisure.) If you want to get fancy with it, you can add a few mint leaves, but I think pineapple water—whether it be pink or golden—is lovely on its own.
