Description
Aguas frescas are sweet, refreshing drinks made with fresh fruit and chilled water. You’ll find them all over Mexico and in taquerias here in the US and they’re pretty much the most delicious drinks you can find during the hot summer months. Agua de piña is a sweet pineapple cooler that’s great on its own or with a plate of spicy Mexican food.
Ingredients
- 1 whole Small Ripe Pineapple
- 6 cups Cold Water, Plus Additional Water For Blending
- ¾ cups White Sugar (You’ll Use Between 2 Tablespoons And 3/4 Cups, Depending On How Sweet/tart The Pineapple Is)
Preparation
Prepare the pineapple by removing the rind and eyes and cut it into sections. Remove the tough core, chew on it to your heart’s content, or discard. Cut pineapple into chunks. My smallish pineapple yielded about 4 cups of chopped fruit.
In a blender, add pineapple chunks and just enough water to blend smoothly, about 1/4 cups water for each cup of fruit. Blend until the fruit is smooth, frothy, and light yellow in color.
Place a fine-meshed sieve over a pitcher and strain the pineapple blend, stirring gently to help the liquid pass through the sieve. Once you have strained all of the pineapple liquids into the pitcher, discard the foamy pulp left in the strainer and skim off and discard any foam floating in the pitcher.
Add six cups of cold water to the pitcher and stir well. Add between 2 Tablespoons and 3/4 cups of white sugar to sweeten the mixture, depending on the tartness/sweetness of your pineapple and your taste. For my pineapple, I used a scant 1/4 cup of sugar. The drink should be sweet in a natural fruit kind of way, not in a Kool-Aid kind of way!
Chill in the refrigerator until very cold. Mix well just before serving and serve over ice.
