January is the time of year when I always seem to inherit a pile of fruit that arrived as a holiday gift. You know what I’m talking about — that box full of apples, pears and citrus that appears on the doorstep one day like some kind of time capsule from an era before supermarkets. In any event, it’s an old timey delivery of vitamin C and a wish for good health in the new year. Yet by February I’m still left wondering “what do I do with all these damn grapefruit?”
Broiled grapefruit with cinnamon sugar
The grapefruit was born in the West Indies in the 18th century as the bastard child of a sweet orange and a pomelo. The name refers to the fact that they grow in clusters, which when unripe look like a giant bunch of green grapes. By the early 20th century they had made it to Florida and Texas, where one of them mutated to form a pink variety. Growers of the atomic age fiddled around with this by blasting it with radiation and created the ruby reds that we have today.
The color in the red varieties comes from the antioxident lycopene, and grapefruit also contain large quantities of spermine, which is alleged to be the fountain of youth. Grapefruit have a low glycemic index so they won’t spike your blood sugar, they may help lower cholesterol, and proponents of the grapefruit diet swear that they are stocked with fat burning enzymes. On the downside, grapefruit can mess with the metabolism of certain drugs like Lipitor with potentially fatal consequences. So, like many things, grapefruit will cure all that ails you, unless of course they kill you first.
Sadly, naringin, one of the phytochemicals that provides you with so many of these health benefits, also makes grapefruit taste incredibly bitter to some people. I’ll admit that I was never really a fan myself, until I discovered that you can broil them. It may sound weird, but a topping with some cinnamon sugar and quick trip under the broiler can tame the bitterness and turn grapefruit into a tasty breakfast.
| Broiled Grapefruit With Cinnamon Sugar | Print |
- 1 grapefruit
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- Turn on the broiler.
- Cut the grapefruit in half around its equator. Using a paring knife, slice all the way around the edges of one half to separate the fruit from the white pith, being careful not to slice right through the peel. Then slice along the membranes to free up each segment, working your way around until you're back where you started. Repeat with the other half.
- Mix the sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle generously over the top of the grapefruit halves.
- Place in an oven safe dish or broiler pan and place it under the broiler. Broil for 10-15 mins or until the sugar fully melts and is bubbly.
The broiler will carmelize the sugar, which combines with the cinnamon and grapefruit juices to make a tasty topping, and the heat will bring out the sweetness of the grapefruit. Yum!
If you’re looking to use grapefruit for dinner, it actually pairs well with fatty seafood, like shellfish or salmon, as well as avocado (which is also high in fat – much like with white wine, the acid in the grapefruit cuts through and provides an interesting contrast).
Finally, when life hands you grapefruit, make cocktails! The classic grapefruit cocktail is the Greyhound, which is simply grapefruit juice and vodka. (If you squeeze the juice out of a grapefruit and through a sieve you might get around 3/4 cup, which is just a bit more than you need to make one of these)
| The Greyhound | Print |
- 4 oz grapefruit juice
- 2 oz vodka
- lemon, lime, or orange wedge for garnish
- Pour the grapefruit juice and vodka into an ice-filled collins glass give it a quick stir.
- Garnish with the citrus wedge.
If you sub out the vodka with gin and salt the rim of the glass, you end up with a variation called The Salty Dog, which is much more interesting in my opinion. Letting a sip of this puppy roll across your tongue you can actually get a taste of bitter, sour, sweet, and salty all in one.
| The Salty Dog | Print |
- salt
- 4 oz grapefruit juice
- 2 oz gin
- lemon, lime, or orange wedge for garnish
- Moisten the rim of a collins glass and roll it through some salt. Shake off the excess.
- Fill the glass with ice, add the grapefruit juice and gin, and give it a quick stir.
- Garnish with the citrus wedge.
As it turns out, salt is actually even better than sugar at masking bitterness, which is part of the genius here.
Finally, if you want your grapefruit both baked and boozy, there’s always Baked Brandied Grapefruit. With a few of those on the menu, breakfast should be extra fun.
Does heating the grapefruit destroy or denature the naringen, thus removing both the bitter flavor and the nutritive value, or is there some other mechanism involved?
Hey Marc, I don’t think it gets hot enough to break down the naringin, there are probably some other effects at work here. I did some research on this actually but wasn’t able to nail it down 100% as to why. As it turns out, our taste buds are most susceptible to things at room temperature – heating stuff up to roughly warmer than body temp reduces that sensitivity and makes it taste less bitter (hot coffee tastes better than room temperature coffee). There are also sugars released in the cooking process and of course the sugar and cinnamon you’re adding on top mix in with the juices and other flavor compounds created by the heat and this helps mask the bitterness.