Mexican Pineapple Vinegar

The choice is yours: make your own homemade Mexican Pineapple Vinegar or just keep throwing away pineapple peels like a fool.

After butchering my mom's latest pineapple crop, shipped direct from her backyard in Delray Beach, FL, I recalled a use for pineapple peels in the counterculture foodie instant classic Wild Fermentation. Like all of the author's recipes, this is ridiculously simple, surprisingly productive, and yields a free, healthful, flavorful and homemade food almost out of thin air.



Looking back on all the pineapples whose rinds I've simply discarded, I now see lost opportunities for bottles and bottles of this miraculous liquid. All you do is soak cut up hunks of pineapple peel in sugar water, and wait. That's it. The result is a compelling yellow liquor with the flavor of the fruit and the bite of vinegar. Besides tasting I have yet to use it, but I'm thinking it will serve as a secret weapon in my next salsa, guacamole, or gazpacho. Other suggestions?

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Recipe: Pineapple Vinegar
From Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz

1/4 cup sugar
Peel of 1 pineapple
water
cheesecloth (or old T-shirt)
glass jar

Note: Unless it's coming from your mom's backyard, you probably want to go organic here. You want pineapple vinegar, not pineapple-doused-in-poison-and-food-grade-petroleum vinegar.

1. In a jar or bowl, dissolve the sugar in 1 quart of water. Coarsely chop and add the pineapple peel. Cover with cheesecloth to keep flies out, and leave to ferment at room temperature.

2. When you notice the liquid darkening, after about 1 week, strain out the pineapple peels and discard. (compost!)

3. Ferment the liquid 2 to 3 weeks more, stirring or agitating periodically, and your pineapple vinegar is ready.

Another Note: I left the peels in for about three weeks and never "agitated" and it worked just fine.