Take advantage of sales on fresh pineapple! Don’t be intimidated by the prickly fruit. Learn how to cut pineapple quickly and easily.
To eat healthfully is to enjoy fresh fruit whenever you can. Fresh fruit tastes so much better than canned or frozen – particularly if you know how to prepare it.
A fresh pineapple with its intoxicating scent and sweet-tart flavor can be a treat, but its prickly exterior can seem intimidating to some. How in the world can you get into the goodness without hurting yourself?
Here’s a quick and easy pictorial to help you cut pineapple like a pro. This method is very similar to how we cut the melon and the grapefruit sections and will take just minutes.
How to Cut Pineapple:
1. Wash the pineapple.
As with the melon, rinse the outside of the pineapple with water and vinegar. Even though you aren’t going to eat the peel, you are going to cut through it, thereby possibly exposing the inner flesh to bacteria and other germs. By washing the surface, you reduce the risk of cross-contamination.
2. Make it stable.
Cut off the two ends and stand the pineapple on one end. In this way, the pineapple will be stable on your cutting surface, not wobbling all over the place.
3. Cut away the rind.
With a chef’s knife, cut away the rind, curving your cuts between the rind and flesh, thusly. Proceed around the sides of the pineapple until all the rind is removed.
You may see that the prickles of the pineapple go fairly deep. You can cut these away individually so that you can preserve the fruit in between.
4. Cut away the core.
Now cut through the pineapple, just to the side of the hard, inner core. Cut all the way down.
5. Remove the core.
Continue cutting around the core until you have several long wedges of pineapple.
6. Cut up the pineapple for serving.
Cut the wedges into spears or chunks to serve or use in recipes. Store leftover in a covered container in the fridge.
You can also freeze the pineapple in airtight containers to use later. If you’d like to freeze them to use just a handful of chunks at a time, be sure to follow this method of freezing individual fruits.
7. Repeat as necessary.
See? That wasn’t hard, was it? Now you can bravely go forth to your grocery store and snatch up those sale pineapples whenever you find them.
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Thanks! I have a fresh pineapple on the fridge that I got a great deal on at Costco. Figured I'd give it a try and now I'm confident I can do it. Perfect timing!
~ Michelle @ FTSN
We love to buy fresh pineapple. We live in Moorhead MN so we don't have the best produce but when pineapple is good and on sale its about 1.98 The family flocks to the kitchen asking when its going to be sliced. During the winter we do buy chunks.
Thank you! Stephanie
I buy both. Reeeeeeally good fresh is unbeatable. I love it all alone and I love it made into simple pineapple desserts. I also use canned year round in multiple applications from salads to muffins to cakes. It's extremely versatile.
WOW! What a great deal on pineapple. Up here in Michigan I saw it "on sale" for $4.99 last week.
Great price!!
We buy fresh because we live in Hawaii and it seems rather scandalous to buy canned when you can get fresh out of the field from roadside stands. LOL
For anyone interested, Dole Plantation shows another way to cut pineapple on their website:
http://www.dole-plantation.com/Cutting The pineapple boat they show is a very cute way to serve fresh fruit salad.
Oh, and I also read an idea on someone's blog (I wish I could remember where!) to put pineapple core into water. Let it sit for a few hours to a day. It tastes SO good!!
I love fresh pineapple. I buy one every week! I cut it the exact same way you do…good to know I'm doing it right! Just one thing….I wish it would last longer in the fridge once it's cut! I find I have to eat it fast before it starts to get sour…
Does it need refrigeration before cutting?
Not while it’s ripening. Once it’s ripe, refrigerate.
Fresh pineapple is awesome! 😀 I buy both canned and fresh, but fresh tastes sooooo much better!
Great advice on cleaning your pineapple as well as melons….too many people have no idea about all the bacteria you can have on the outside of the fruit! my wifes favorite way to use pineapple is to grill it!
Cheers
Dennis
I've never heard of it that cheap, $1.99 was insanely cheap for us this year! But, I pretty much only eat it when I can get it fresh because I learned the canning process kills many of the helpful enzymes, so why buy canned, ya know? -Amanda Y.
Fresh pineapple just tastes better. Period.
I love pineapple! I never bought it because I didn’t know how to slice it until my 14 year daughter told me to google it! Glad I did!