How to Chop a Pineapple

Yesterday, the beau brought a whole pineapple to contribute to that evening's dinner. For someone who doesn't know how to pick out produce, he managed to get the most excellent pineapple! It was at the perfect point of ripeness. Not too sweet, not too acidic and not too dry. I was in heaven eating it. What was his trick in picking out the perfect pineapple? He told me that he grabbed the one closest to him. Ha!

When I went to start chopping the pineapple, the beau suggested that I take pictures and do a tutorial online on my blog. He was already scoring lots of points with the perfect pineapple and this was a great idea too. I grabbed my camera and started shooting. Here is the result...


How to Chop a Pineapple:

Start off with a pineapple, a cutting board and a good knife.

Cut the bottom off the pineapple but leave the crown on.

Stand the pineapple up. The cut off bottom now provides stabilization. Cut the skin/spines of the pineapple by peel it off in sections with your knife. Hold on to the crown for more stabilization and to help you turn the pineapple as you go.

Once you go all the way around, do a once over to clean off any of the black seeds or parts of the skin you missed.

Once you have a nice clean pineapple, cut the crown off.

If you are really picky, you can do some more carving to make the pineapple body perfectly circular. I like the rustic look so mine was all uneven.

Stand up the body of the pineapple and cut it in half.

Then cut it in half the other way so you have 4 thick slices of pineapple.

With each of the four slices, stand up each slice and with your knife cut off the tough fibrous part in the middle. This is an important step many people miss. This part of the pineapple is not terribly edible (but you can gnaw on it for fun!).

Once you have removed the fibrous part of each of the 4 slices, halve each slice lengthwise.

Then chop each of the new slices into chunks.