I would simmer the pineapple in water with some dark rum added, then purée it and add ginger, soy sauce, and vinegar to make a sauce. Instead of a whole chicken, I'd get boneless breasts or thighs and thinly them and your vegetables.

Then proceed as for a stir-fry (if you have a skillet available) and serve over rice.

Mmmmm great idea Ruthanna! I am actually off to the store right now to buy the chicken and since I am now living in MI, I can get rum at the grocery store! I hate rum but my SO likes it so I can pawn the extra off on him! or perhaps soak a Christmas loaf or two!

Poke some holes in the chicken pieces and marinate it first. -in the pineapple orange juice. Put some slivers of orange zest and pineapple slivers under the skin.

Is organic necessary if you can get some good homegrown, natural, antibiotic free, Michigan chicken? Save money and buy a can of pineapple, crushed or chunks, to use the juice for the marinade and the meat for the sauce.

If you are short of time, keep the chicken whole and put pa slivers under the skin and zest or small orange hunks with seasonings and hunks of aromatics. This will get you halfway to a good sauce, too.

Well, the best laid plans . . . A whole organic chicken was over 11 bucks which was only 2.19 per lb but so much of that would be bones. Turns out I didn't feel well enough to deal with the carcass and make soup plus I didn't feel like paying that much for dinner. I got boneless thighs and chicken breast tenders. They had organic bone-in whole breasts for 6.15/lb. and the tenders were on sale for 4.72/lb. Kind of bums me out because now I have these tenders that will cook way faster than the thighs to deal with. But I just don't feel well enough to deal with bones this week!

And I couldn't find rum at the store and wasn't up for spending time searching. I will use ginger in the recipe though, need to use up my spices!!

I buy organic chicken because I do not want to expose myself to genetically modified corn that has Bt toxins in it. Plus a whole host of other pesticides that might be in non-organic feed. If I had easy access to farm raised free-range I might not be so picky about the labeling. Chickens that eat bugs taste better anyway! ;) Normally when it is just me eating chicken once or twice a week max I don't mind splurging.

I am generally wary of using orange juice in cooking. Once I was experimenting with orange juice and chicken, and the result tasted remarkably like vomit. The same sour, stomach acid flavor of a college toilet bowl after too many screwdrivers.

Now I use orange zest instead.

It is fun to think of what one would do with hypothetical ingredients. Let's see - I would probably have bought a couple breasts, cut hollows, and stuffed them with reconstituted pineapple. How would it have come out - no idea. Hopefully not like vomit.

Well, I used "low acid" orange juice and it hardly had ANY flavor. It turned out pretty good but it was weird because the dried pineapple had NO flavor. So what I did was marinate the thighs and breasts in a mix of onion, garlic, chopped dried pineapple and low acid orange juice, with ginger and cumin for spices. Then I sauteed the meat briefly and put it in the dutch oven with the marinade, fruit, carrots and baked it at 400 for 45 min. I put the chicken breast tenders in halfway through the baking time, when I also added some cabbage and sauteed green peppers. When everything was cooked I reduced the pan juices to serve as a sauce. You could not taste any pineapple taste when you ate the dried pineapple. It was sweet, but not very sour. Oh, and my folks had some rum which I added a dash to the marinade. My dad liked it, because he said he likes sweet things. Sadly, the whole meal lacked salt as far as I was concerned. I salted everything but not enough for my taste, it was rather bland. I should have added some cider vinegar to the marinade. I had actual cider with dinner and it was the strongest tasting thing on the menu! Oh and we had sweet corn which I have not had very much of this year. That was delish.

I'm editing to add that I still have half a bag of the dried pineapple left so I'm open to suggestions. I thought about getting pineapple juice for the marinade but I hardly ever use fruit juice so I know the little cans of pineapple juice would sit around forever. I thought the pineapple might flavor up the blandish low acid orange juice but that was a bust. I think next time I need to do what Ruthanna said and make a stir fry sauce from the dried pineapple and thicken it with cornstarch and use in a stir fry.

This post was edited by lpinkmountain on Sun, Sep 28, 14 at 22:15