Cutting Fresh Pineapple & Cantaloupe

Apparently I've led a sheltered life, as I have never cut a fresh pineapple or a fresh cantaloupe. While in the produce section at my local grocery story, I was feeling adventurous. I picked up a fresh pineapple and a fresh cantaloupe to serve when we had friends and family over on Easter. I can home and searched for blogs with these steps. Either my Google skills need work, or there aren't that many people out there who don't know how to cut these delicious fruits. I could only find videos for the cantaloupe.

For the pineapple, I used some of the tips from this Good Housekeeping article with a guide on cutting a pineapple. Let me tell you right now, my pineapple chunks didn't turn out the prettiest, but they sure tasted good.

First,

It knows this is my first time...

 

First, I cut off the crown. Sorry, buddy.

Next, I sliced down the skin, going all around the pineapple.

 

It wasn't exactly beautiful, but I finally got all the eyes off.

I used a paring knife to get any little, lasting pieces of the eye (the brown spots).

Then I quartered the pineapple. Ummm, yeah not the best quarter job.

Next, you need to cut the core. The core is the white, hardened spot. I had issues finding all of the core, so I definitely plan on investing in a pineapple corer. 

Then I just cut it into chunks. It was actually quite simple. Tasted and smelled delicious!

 

And now for the cantaloupe.

First, I cut it in half. Again, not the best cutting job. As you can see, the left portion is bigger. Oops.

  

Then, scoop out the seeds. You can use a spoon, but your finger (clean, of course!!) actually works really well to get the lasting seeds.

Next, I cut the two halves two different ways. You can see the ones on the right are the whole crescent shape, and the ones on the left are crescent halves. I actually did this on accident, but it worked out so I could see which way works easiest.

 

I used the paring knife to cut the cantaloupe away from skin/peel/rind, whatever you call it. I actually found that it was easier to do this with the crescent halves because I could stand the piece up and slice it.

Once I had all the fruit sliced off of the rind, I simply cut it into chunks. Again, very simple, and I'm not sure why it me almost 26 years to ever cut either of these fruits. I'll never go back to canned again!