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They say the reason why pineapple tarts taste so good is because it’s a product of love. From grating the pineapples to slow boiling it over the stove for hours, shaping the pastry dough and baking it trays after trays. The pineapple jam is an important component of the pineapple tarts, aka kuih tarts, kue tair, kue nastar in other parts of Asia. Now after making almost 1kg of the pineapple jam and used it all on my pineapple tarts, I have one pineapple sitting on my countertop looking very ripe. This morning I woke up and thought how can I cook the pineapple jam in a less tedious way? I need something that cooks it dry faster. That’s how this air fryer pineapple jam idea came about. I’m not sure if anyone has done it before, and there’s really no harm trying it out, my mummy who is my most ardent supporter said go for it, why not?

Here’s a quick rundown of using the Air Fryer to make Pineapple Jam:

My 1.5kg pineapple, after cutting off the top, bottom, skin, core and ‘eyes’, weights about 625g with the extracted juice. I didn’t remove the juice when I air fry the pineapple mixture.

After slightly more than an hour in the air fryer, I finally got the texture and dryness I wanted and it yields me about 250g of the pineapple jam.
I cooked using the air fry mode on my Ninja Air Fryer at 180 degree celsius for 25 minutes, stirring it every 5-6 minutes to avoid the pineapple bits from being burnt. By this time, most of the liquid is gone but the jam is a little moist. Then I switch to dehydrate mode for another 45 minutes, the dehydrate mode uses a temperature of 60 degree celsius, I left the jam inside without stirring it for that 45 minutes. The jam came out perfect!
The liquid does get cooked off quite quickly in the air fryer, so I added the lemon juice and rock sugar when there’s still some liquid so the sugar can dissolve in the liquid.

I grated the pineapple into slightly bigger bits, since I’m using the air fryer, and small food pieces will ‘fly’ around while it air fries. The end result is a slightly chunkier pineapple jam. After the jam was cooked, I had wanted to grind it further using my food processor but decided against it. I can literally feel the small bits of pineapple when I tasted it and I really liked it.
I’d think it’s ok to air fry 2-3 pineapples at one go. The more juice the pineapple has, it will of course require more time to air fry and dehydrate.