# Warning: Use caution when cooking with fresh pineapple!



## Rikki Jean (Jul 15, 2005)

_ETA: Since I have been enlightened, I changed my title from "do not use fresh pineapple on a ham"._









My pinapple literally ate my Thanksgiving ham! Pinapple contains an enzyme called Bromelain, a digestive aid. Apparently only fresh and frozen pinapple contain the enzyme (my guess is that it gets cooked out in the canning process). Even though I already knew about Bromlain, I didn't think that it would have any affect on cooking with it. WRONG!

I poured pinapple juice _all over_ the ham before it went in the oven, and I poured all of the extra juice into the bottom of the pan. After cooking in the pinapple juice for over an hour and a half, I pulled the ham out of the oven. When I picked it up to put it on a platter, the ham started to fall apart. Most of it was salvagable, and we all had a good laugh about it. Everyone said it tasted really good!







:

Today, we pulled out some of the leftover ham to make ham and eggs. It had turned into complete mush! I turned around to look at the smoothie recipes I have stuck on my fridge w/a magnet. The "tummy tamer" talks all about how good pinapple is for calming an upset tummy because of the Bromelain. Duh!









I guess next year, I will have to give up being obsessed with fresh foods for a day!


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## maxwill129 (May 12, 2005)

Oh no! At least you could laugh about it!!!

Shannon

(And that's a great tip to know!!!)


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## Finch (Mar 4, 2005)

LMAO I had no idea!! Bless your heart. Well at least the ham was juicy.


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## Samjm (Mar 12, 2005)

Heat will kill bromelein, so you can just bring your juice to a boil before you use it and you'll be fine. This is why canned pineapple is fine too (the heat in the canning process kills the bromelein. This si also why you can't use fresh pineapple with gelatin - the bromelein prevetns the gelatin from working.

Papaya has a similar enzyme called papain. Works like bromelein.


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## Rikki Jean (Jul 15, 2005)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Samjm* 
Heat will kill bromelein, so you can just bring your juice to a boil before you use it and you'll be fine. This is why canned pineapple is fine too (the heat in the canning process kills the bromelein. This si also why you can't use fresh pineapple with gelatin - the bromelein prevetns the gelatin from working.

Ooooh, good to know. Thanks! A mama on another board said that she always uses fresh pinapple on her ham with no problems. I'll have to ask her if she boils the juice first. I think the biggest problem may also have been that I had a good 3/4'' of juice in the bottom of the pan!


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