Acai Berry Recipes

Rachel Ray acai berry recipes are hard to find. After searching off and on for a number of days I gave up searching but I hadn’t given up hope. I decided to experiment in my own kitchen. Often some of my favorite recipes are those I’ve stumbled across when I’ve had to switch one ingredient for another in a pinch.

My most popular dish at home is a baked chicken breast with a spicy citrus marinade, so I thought perhaps I could invent a chicken dish with acai berry juice substituted in for one of the citrus juices I normally use. As long as I kept my marinade time the same as usual (at least 6 hours in the refrigerator), I thought I couldn’t go wrong trying out a citrus acai marinade.

I cut the chicken breast into strips and pour acai juice and some extra virgin cold pressed olive oil over the pieces. In an effort to cut the sweetness, I added some sea salt and crushed capers. The result was interesting and got fairly good reviews. I didn’t like it as much as my stand by marinades so I won’t be likely to repeat this recipe. Also I ended up tossing much of the acai goodness down the drain which entirely defeats the health benefits of acai berry juice. Additionally, acai is more expensive than lime juice or orange juice so it was a slightly expensive experiment.

So my next recipe was a variation on another favorite of mine, and I hoped it would turn out better than the chicken experiment. In fact it did meet with very positive reviews. This is my own version of acai berry frozen yogurt. Mix acai berry juice with a non-flavored low fat yogurt. Then set a strainer and cheese cloth in a bowl, pour through the yogurt, put it in the fridge and let it drain through the yogurt for a day. Once the yogurt has drained, you are left with a cream cheese like mixture, which in fact is quite good as a spread or dip at this point.

I pealed the acai/yogurt mixture off the cheese cloth and into some Tupperware. I then froze the mixture for 8 hours. It was delicious! It was tangy from the yogurt and had the rich berry taste of acai. The amount of freezing depends on how you like to have your frozen yogurt. I prefer it softer rather than harder and therefore 8 hours worked well for me.

Finally, I tried my own version of the old standby, the fruit smoothie. Actually there are a lot of acai berry juice mixes that have a creamy consistency and are called ’smoothies’ on the label, but I like to make my smoothies fresh so I get the little bit of ice chips right in the smoothie. I mixed ice, banana, yogurt and acai berry juice in my blender, and blended until smooth. A trick I like to use is to freeze the banana before adding it, which makes the smoothy even creamier. In any event, as predicted, this was pretty delicious.

So as you can see, it’s not all that hard to find some interesting dishes to make with acai, so you can get the health benefits from this very popular new super food. As you can see, I was able to make a breakfast (the smoothie), snack and main dish all using acai berry. Maybe I should write in to Rachel Ray and see if she has any actual recipe ideas. Until then, I’ll just keep experimenting.

Last 5 posts by Jane A Moore

• My First Attempt At Acai Berry Recipes - July 4th, 2009