Dole – Let’s Talk Pineapples

While we were at the Dole Plantation, we got to sit in and watch a pineapple selection/cutting demonstration.  Now I like pineapple and fresh is always better, however, I learned a few things and I thought it might be fun to share.

Selection
1.  Smell – you don’t want them to have a real strong pineapple smell.  The more pineapple smell you get, the more the fruit is actually fermenting.

2.  You want the Pineapple’s eyes to be relatively the same size all the way around.  That means it is ripe.

3.  Color has nothing to do in the selection process, it just means how much sunlight one side had vs the other.

4.  You can twist the top out (yes twist, not pull, not cut, etc), allow it to dry a couple of days, place it in water and create your own pineapple plant.  You need to keep it between 70 and 90 degrees year-round and it should produce about 3 pineapples per plant.

Now, there are 2 ways to cut up your freshly chosen subject…  One is with a knife, the other is with the pineapple cutter (btw I’ve wanted one of these forever!! and now we own one.  I actually bought mine at Bed Bath and Beyond here on the mainland but Dole sold them too.)

So anyway the knife cutting way:

Very simple.  Cut the pineapple top off & bottom.  Give yourself a stable base.

 

Once you have the fruit from the skin, you can slice the fruit up.

Now if you used the flexible knife you can then arrange the pieces back and forth and display in the skin… ah!

So the second way to slice up your pineapple involves the really cool gadget!!
Again you start the same way, slice off the top, but not the bottom.  This way you can get into the fruit!

Next lay the tool on top and slowly start winding it down into the fruit.

Once you have gone all the way to the bottom, slowly pull the fruit out of the top.

Now mine has the little apple-like chopper that goes to it.  At this point, you either take a knife and cut it up into pieces or else use the little chopper and slice down to make your pineapple wedges.

And definitely DON’T get rid of the shell because it makes a GREAT cup for a fruity drink!!

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