This easy No-Fry Pineapple Rice Salad is a simple side perfect for summer parties. It’s a cold rice salad filled with peas, carrots, chives, and pineapple and lightly seasoned with rice cooking wine, toasted sesame oil, and rice vinegar.
The flavor is really subtle, making it the perfect side for more flavorful and saucy sides. It can be prepared in advanced and you’ll get bonus points for being able to serve it in the hollowed-out pineapple.
Jump to Recipe
I’m a little bummed I missed out on the Memorial Day Weekend food blogging extravaganza. It’s the last three day weekend for a long while and this No-Fry Pineapple Rice Salad and the two other recipes I created with pineapple would have been perfect. But I was (and still am) experiencing a major case of blogging burnout and blues.
I’m a little lost, to be honest. The post-birthday euphoria is hitting and I realize I’m 30 and need to get a paying job now that I have my health in control.
Figuring out how to make a resume that incorporates my vastly different fields of experience is mind-boggling. Maybe I should just split the difference? But that kind of makes me feel like I have split personalities.
Existential crises aside, my adventures the last couple of weekends have made me even more excited for summer dinner parties, BBQs, and hanging out with my family and friends around food and drinks.
Memorial Day Weekend isn’t the end-all and be-all of summer outdoor party gatherings, right?
No-Fry Pineapple Rice Salad
Cook the rice, cool it and mix all the ingredients together. That’s how easy it is. But I will break down cutting the pineapple, which can seem intimidating. Maybe it was the pineapple I got but cutting it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.
First, I cut the pineapple in half vertically, trying my best to keep the leaves and top neat and intact.
I then used a smaller knife to cut a grid into the pineapple. Once finished, the pineapple pieces should start looking loose. Use a spoon to scoop out the pineapple. You’ll have to scrape and sometimes use the knife to break the pineapple free.
Set aside the pineapple halves to use as bowls. The No-Fry Pineapple Salad goes in one-half and the recipe I’m sharing next week (Cauliflower Tempura Bites with Honey Ginger Sriracha Sauce) goes in the other half. Freeze the pineapple chunks from the other half of the pineapple. I’ll be sharing a frozen margarita recipe on Friday that you can use them in!
More outdoor party food…
Check out some of these delicious sides, appetizers, or beverages perfect for outdoor entertaining:
Roasted Cherry Crostini with Goat Cheese and Smoked Turkey
Puff Pastry Twists with IPA Beer Cheese Dip
Preserved Lemon and Chickpea Arugula Salad
Mango Margaritas with a Tumeric Chili Twist
Goat Cheese Crostini Spread with Preserved Lemon and Balsamic Drizzle
Orecchiette Pasta Salad with Feta, Arugula, Strawberries, and Prosciutto
Burrata Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms with a Cherry Tomato and Nectarine Salsa
Watermelon, Cucumber, and Sweet Onion Salad with Feta
An Excellent Entertaining Trio
If you combine this N0-Fry Pineapple Rice Salad, Cauliflower Tempura Bites with Honey Ginger Sriracha Sauce, and this Frozen Pineapple Painkiller Margarita with Ginger and Jalapeño, you will have a killer meal!
No-Fry Pineapple Rice Salad
Ingredients
- 1 cup medium or long grain rice
- 1.5 cups water
- 1 cup frozen peas, unthawed
- 1 cup carrot, peeled and grated
- 1 tablespoon chives, diced
- 2 cups pineapple, cut in 1/2 inch squares 1/2 a pineapple
- 2 tablespoons Mirin, rice cooking wine I use Eden, which doesn’t have any corn syrup added
- 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- salt, to taste 1/2 to 1 teaspoon
Instructions
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Add the rice and water to a rice cooker and cook.
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Spread the cooked rice on a baking sheet and let it cool to room temperature.
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While the rice cooks, prepare the ingredients.
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Combine the cooled rice with the prepared ingredients in a large bowl.
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In a small bowl, mix the Mirin, vegetable oil, toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, sugar, and salt. Drizzle over the cold rice and mix. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
Recipe Notes
Cut the pineapple in half vertically with a large knife. Try to keep the leaves and top neat and intact if you are going to use it for a bowl.
Use a smaller knife to cut a grid into the pineapple. Pull the edges a little to loosen the pineapple. Use a spoon to scoop out the pineapple. You’ll have to scrape and sometimes use the knife to break the pineapple free.
Set aside the pineapple halves to use as bowls.
This is such a cool recipe! I LOVE that you used the pineapple halves as serving bowls! So creative! 🙂
This looks so good! Your pics are delicious.
Thanks so much Jenny!
pineapple fried rice used to be my favorite as a kid. pretty sure it was an excuse to just eat more pineapple though (; and good luck on your resume!! i think one the keys is to tailor it to the job that you’re applying to, but also if you have something interesting that makes you stand out, if you add it to the end in skills/accomplishments, then i’ve heard that helps too (:
Basically, yes! Any way to get more pineapple! And oh boy don’t I know it! The days of having a single resume are dead and gone. I thinK I need to make a general one that mashes all my skills together in a cohesive whole and then tweak it for whatever job I’m applying for. Thanks for the advice!
We go through SO MANY pineapples- I love this!!!! And using the pineapple as the bowl is such a cool serving trick!
Me too! I love how you can create so many different meals and snacks with just ONE pineapple! They’re so awesome.
I was once taken by some Thai friends of mine to this super “secret” Thai restaurant off some back alley in Sydney – It was behind an unmarked rusted door in between garbage dumpsters, super cool and super weird/ creepy at the same time, but turned out to be THE place where all the Thai people went for real thai food – and it was the first time I was introduced to rice served in a pineapple bowl. I was like “wow, how amazing is that?!?!” until I learned a few days later that the whole pineapple bowl thing was not exactly new in the world and I had apparently been living under a rice-in-a-pineapple-bowl rock! However, I still think it is an awesome way to serve rice especially when you’re the one turning up at a social gathering with it!!!
Haha, that’s always me, thinking I discovered something awesome and new only to find out that I’m WAY behind the times! That sounds like a super fun adventure-I haven’t experienced going to a restaurant like that in a very long time.
very helpful post Meg! I buy canned pineapples only because I hate cutting a ginormous pokky pineapple. But your tips here is helpful 🙂
Glad it was helpful! I avoided them too, mostly because I would always remember one time when a particularly pointy pineapple actually pricked me bad enough to draw blood. I figured it was time to get over my fears though!
This dish is so beautiful. Cutting a pineapple can bet intimidating so I appreciate the step by step. Also, I love that fact that once you cook the rice, it is prep and put it all together. My kind of dish.
Thanks, Cindy! Pineapple is one of those fruits where I always wonder who was the first to be brave and figure out how to eat it. And that’s my favorite part of this dish too!
I’ve never had pineapple in my rice before. My mom is Pacific Islander so rice is handled pretty strictly at our house haha But I soooo want to try this! I mean, the just presentation alone is awesome!!
I’ve only ever had it in pineapple fried rice, which I’m sure is an American Chinese fast food love child. I love hearing about how people prepare their rice (I’m weird like that). I lived in Japan for a little and that’s where I first learned to prepare rice but the first time I saw one of my friends cook their rice over the stove I was like “what are you doing?!”