- Selection of products
- Options for recipes
Courgettes - familiar and native for our country vegetables. Recipes for their preparation for centuries mistresses invented very, very much, everyone will find a dish to your taste. A distinctive feature of zucchini is some neutrality of taste, which allows creating completely unexpected flavoring solutions - for example, to prepare pineapples from zucchini with pineapple juice.
Selection of products
An original and unusual recipe will help to make a variety in the menu and learn the familiar zucchini in a completely new light. To taste, aroma, even appearance, pineapples from courgettes are practically indistinguishable from real ones. At the same time the delicacy will cost much cheaper than canned canned pineapple, and for health it will be more useful.
In order to make this appetizer really tasty and useful, you should take a responsible approach to choosing products for it. Typically, the main ingredients are two - the zucchini and pineapple juice themselves.
Zucchini
The best option is the home zucchini, grown on its vegetable garden. In this case, you can be 100% sure of their quality. But properly selected store vegetables are also suitable.
For this recipe you need to select small, young zucchini, in which there are very few seeds. Large overripe vegetables can also be used, but in them almost the entire core is filled with large seeds, so it will have to be thrown away, which is not very economical. It is best to use specimens weighing 120-250 g, not longer than 20 cm.
Important! The color of the peduncle should be green. If it is withered, darkened or not at all, it is likely that the tavern has been torn down for a long time.
Special attention should be paid to the color, thickness and condition of the peel. It should be fairly thin, without external damage( scratches, scuffs).Color zucchini can be different - white, green, striped. Color can smoothly move from one shade to another. At the same time, there should be no sharp transitions and spots, as a rule, they indicate the beginning of rotting of the fetus.
Pineapple Juice
When choosing juice for the preparation of zucchini as pineapples for the winter, one should not try to save on its quality, because harvesting will take several months, or even six months to stand in the cellar or pantry. Ideal option, of course, would be freshly squeezed pineapple juice, however, due to its inaccessibility and high cost, you can limit yourself to juice.
Choosing the best juice in glass jars, so it is stored longer without losing quality. Also a good option is the juice in a cardboard package with a foil layer.
Natural ingredients should predominate in the product. Ideally, only juice, without an additional list of preservatives, sweeteners, etc. It should be borne in mind that natural juice without preservatives is kept less.
Options for recipes
You can prepare pineapples from zucchini according to different recipes. As a result of small changes in the number of basic ingredients or cooking time, you can get "pineapples" in syrup, jam, compote or almost zucchini from zucchini.
Tip: Some landladies, to give the "pineapple" more suitable color, add a little turmeric to the preparation.
Pineapples for the table and for the winter
You can prepare a delicious snack for the festive table quite quickly and with a minimum set of ingredients:
- kilogram of fresh squash;
- 350 ml of pineapple juice;
- half a cup of sugar;
- two-thirds of a teaspoon of citric acid;
- vanillin( optional).
Washed zucchini is peeled and cut into rings of medium thickness( approximately 0.7-15 mm).With the help of a glass or a glass, a core with seeds is cut out.
Recommendation! You can leave zucchini rings or cut them into cubes. Cubes are more convenient because they can fall asleep in the syrup at once everything, and not boil batchwise, like ringlets.
In a suitable enamel saucepan, mix pineapple juice with sugar, citric acid and vanillin. Stirring constantly, the mixture is heated until all the sugar has melted. At this stage, the liquid is best tasted, so that, if necessary, add more sugar.
In the boiling syrup spread zucchini, reducing the heat to a slow boil. Rings need to be boiled in one layer, 7 minutes on each side.
Finished pineapples spread on a dish with syrup. It is advisable to let them brew for at least a few hours, so that zucchini is better soaked in the taste and smell of syrup. You can serve them to the table as an independent snack for tea or prepare a delicious fruit salad."False pineapples" are sweet, with a light sour and indistinguishable from the real ones.
To prepare zucchini in pineapple juice for the winter, you need to slightly change the amount of syrup, so that it is enough to fully fill the jars:
- kilograms of courgettes;
- 700 ml of juice;
- a glass of sugar;
- 2/3 tspcitric acid;
- vanillin( according to taste and desire).
For a long version it is better to cut the squash cubes - so they will denserly fall into the jar and will be soaked with syrup. In other respects, the recipe does not differ from the main one. The cubes are boiled for 15 minutes, laid out on sterilized jars, poured with boiling syrup juice and spiked with sterilized lids.
Cabbage-pineapple jam with lemon
By changing the proportions of the main ingredients, you can prepare pineapples from zucchini with pineapple juice in the form of a thick jam.
The ratio of products is as follows:
- 2-2.5 kg of fresh young zucchini;
- 0,5-0,7 l of pineapple juice;
- 1-2 glasses of sugar;
- 0.5 teaspoon of citric acid;
- vanillin to taste.
For jam it is better to cut zucchini cubes, you can also use different molds. The main thing is that they do not have any seeds left and all the pieces are about the same size.
Tip: By reducing or increasing the amount of juice, you can change the density of the jam.
The cut courgettes are placed in a saucepan, covered with sugar and added with juice. All thoroughly mixed and allowed to stand for several minutes. Then add the acid to the mixture and move the pan to the plate. The fire should be average, and after boiling it is reduced to a weak one. Cooked jam for 15-20 minutes, so that zucchini become soft. You can cook for longer, but it's important to make sure that the pieces of the vegetable do not break into porridge.
A few minutes before the preparedness in the jam is added vanillin, enough will be 1-2 pinch. You can also check for taste and, if necessary, add sugar. When zucchini are ready, they will acquire a beautiful golden color, and the kitchen will fill with the delicious smell of pineapple.
In the sterilized jars, put a slice of lemon, sprinkle it with a pinch of sugar or vanillin. Top spread the prepared jam and roll the jar. Further, traditionally, it needs to be turned around and wrapped up.
Compote from zucchini
No less tasty and just as accessible is a compote made from zucchini with pineapple taste. By ingredients, it practically does not differ from jam or slices in syrup:
- 1-1.5 kg of young zucchini;
- a liter of juice;
- 0.5 tbsp. Sahara;
- 0.5 tsp.citric acid;
- orange.
As in previous recipes, zucchini is peeled and peeled, cut into an arbitrary shape - rings, cubes, triangles, etc. Then they are transferred to a suitable saucepan, poured with pineapple juice and freshly squeezed orange. The mixture is insisted for about 50-70 minutes, then covered with sugar, add lemon and put on medium heat. After boiling, the gas is reduced and cooked for about 5-10 minutes.
The ready drink is poured over sterilized jars, rolled up and left to stand for several days.
Delicious and original dish will be a perfect addition to any table. The charm of zucchini in pineapple juice in the ease of changing the recipe - from one set of ingredients, varying their ratio, you can get several different but equally tasty snacks. And the availability of these ingredients makes "false pineapples" not only a tasty, but also a budget replacement of these canned fruits.