So I picked up one of those monstrous aloe leaves from the produce aisle today. Now what? All I can find via Google are beauty and burn recipes. Epicurious et all have nothing. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Rhythm
Yikes, Aloe for internal consumption!? Wouldn’t that be like cooking mucus? Understand, I’m not trying to discourage you if it’s safe, but maybe the store just had it there for medicinal use?
I hope.
T.
The first ‘actually eating it’ hit I found was for having it prepared in a syrup because it’s bitter although the ones cultivated for eating possibly less so. The reference originated from Japan but mentioned it was common in Indonesia. Perhaps that would help with narrowing the search?
I had no idea it was taken internally either. A lot of the links seemed to be how to extract the liquid to drink but did not look at all tasty. Um, also, it appears to have laxative properties.
You could make an aloe margarita. I’ve had a prickly pear margarita, but don’t know how similar they’d be.
I had an aloe-based bottled beverage from Trader Joe’s once. It was different, that’s for sure. Kinda refreshing though.
How about a nice refreshing cucumber smoothie?
I recently bought a white chocolate bar with rhubarb and aloe. It was tasty enough.
My husband detected the aloe better than I did. After the tang of the rhubarb and the sweetness of the white chocolate, there was a hint of something, but had I not known the ingredient, I would have never been able to guess what it was.
Well, this is odd… I’ve seen these things in the produce section of a few different mainstream supermarkets (e.g., Stop & Shop, Shop Rite, Hanafords), and always figured they were just some vegetable I hadn’t learned to eat yet. Who the heck has been sneaking them into the bins?
Can’t anything be done with it?
You could make Double-Boiled Aloe Vera Chicken Soup, or an Aloe Cucumber Refresher (…and somebody already linked to that one, I see) or Aloe Vera with Bamboo Pith. I’m sure there are more out there, but those were the easiest to find.
If you try any of those recipes, let us know how they taste. I’m very curious.