20 Grapefruit Recipes That Feature Our Favorite Bittersweet Citrus

When it comes to citrus fruits, lemons, limes, and oranges will always have our hearts, but we think there’s room in there for one more—zesty, bittersweet grapefruit. Once relegated to diet food only, it adds a wonderful depth of flavor to everything from winter salads to cocktails, and we think it deserves a second look. It’s also got a ton of nutritional value, and is chock full of antioxidants and vitamins (just one has a whole day’s worth of vitamin C). Check out these 20 grapefruit recipes for ideas, then get ready to get a bigger fruit bowl.

Fun fact: though you might think adding sugar to grapefruit will help tame its bitterness, it’s actually more effective to add salt. That’s right, salt tricks your taste buds into recognizing more of grapefruit’s citrus vibes than its bitter ones, so it might even work better in savory applications as it does sweet ones. Check out our grapefruit & goat cheese fennel salad, our Citrus Guacamole, or our grapefruit jalape?o baked cod to see what we mean, then get creative!

We also can’t forget to mention how wonderful grapefruit juice is too, especially if you’re the type who thinks orange juice is too sweet. Grapefruit has a lot of those same citrusy qualities, without giving you the terrible alcohol + sugar hangover other juices can. That means it’s lovely in a mimosa, but also paired with sweet triple sec, like in our spicy grapefruit sidecar; with rum, like in our grapefruit-rosemary rum smash; or alongside soda, like in our classic paloma. Still not fully on the grapefruit train? Try using whole segments or zest as garnish in another cocktail first, like we did in our mezcal margarita. Hot tip: January is the best time of year to do this, as it’s when grapefruits are in season and are therefore at their sweetest.