How to cut a pineapple hack diced into bite size pieces so you can use it for upside down pineapple cake, fruit salad or just a healthy snack. Slicing fresh fruit with a knife without waste, what to do with the outside and more.
This pineapple hack will make you understand how to use this fresh fruit that is a little bit intimidating. If you love fresh fruit but have no idea how to prepare it this will change the way you look at it from this day forward. (affiliate links present)
How to Cut Fresh Pineapple
Yes you can always buy this canned with juice but that always adds sugar that you really don’t need. Slicing pineapple fresh is plenty sweet enough, without preservatives, and is great for both savory and sweet desserts. If you have only used it in the latter our Crockpot pineapple chicken should be your first of the other.
Want to make the same thing even faster? Give our Instant Pot Hawaiian chicken a whirl. OMG it is both sweet and savory, served over a bed of rice is literally the best meal ever. First though I will explain how to hold, slice, and cut it again so every piece is pretty much the same size.
How to Cut a Pineapple with a Knife
Ok so you bought one of these babies and your mouth is watering. The outside is not edible so you want to slice that off, but not discard the inside YUM. You can see here how the top is removed and then slowly moving it around in a circle to slice off the spiny tough exterior.
Easiest Way to Cut a Pineapple
You only want to remove around 1/3 of an inch at first, then you can go deeper if some of the sides need it. You can’t go backwards so start off conservatively. If you don’t like to discard anything you can use these pieces later to grill chicken, I will explain that below. If not then just throw them away or throw into your diy compost bin.
How to Cut a Pineapple Hawaiian Style
After you have the top, bottom, and sides removed you just have the good stuff. You can use this technique for small or large diced pieces. How large you cut it will depend on the recipe or dish you are making. If you are serving little ones I would go little like we do with our fruit salad with Cool Whip.
We are going for small as you see here to add it into our ambrosia recipe this time. You can see the photos below for small tidbits sizing. This is how you do it;
Dicing a Fresh Pineapple
How do you know if a pineapple is ripe right? You need to use your hands. It should not be soft overall, somewhat firm on the outside with a little bit of give to it is ideal. The more yellow the exterior is the riper it is becoming. Green will let you know, like a banana, that it will need a bit more time to sit.
Here is a step by step guide with photos in this post explaining how to do this perfectly;
Time needed: 15 minutes
How to Cut a Pineapple
- Top
Place your whole pineapple on it’s side on a cutting board. Using a sharp knife slice off the top of the pineapple and discard.
- Cut
Continue to lay the pineapple on it’s side. Move to the other end and cut the bottom of the pineapple off too, discard. Put the fruit right side up and slice 1/3″ off of the sides all the way around removing the spiny prickly sides.
- Remove
If the middle is quite hard you will want a pineapple corer to remove the core before slicing. Ours was on the smaller side and the texture was on the softer side so we didn’t bother. You can also cut around the core the way I describe below if you don’t have a way to remove it.
- Slice
Now stand the pineapple up. With a sharp small paring knife slice your fruit from top to bottom almost all the way thru leaving 1″ on the bottom still in tact so it stays together. Cut slices in the thickness you prefer all the way across like this leaving one inch still in tact at the very bottom of the whole fruit.
- Dice
Turn 180 degrees around and slice the other direction this same way to create the size you want. Turn to it’s side and all your tidbits will fall off and on to your board to be used.
- Complete
With the remaining 1″ on the bottom you can dice or slice into pineapple chunks as you would a potato to complete the hack.
How to Cut a Pineapple Without Waste
Ok so you hate wasting anything, I get it. If you are this person you can in fact use the outside slices to grill frozen chicken, fresh or thawed out too. You will need those outer pieces and wine to do this. You can look at the images and steps below so you can understand what I am referring to.
I will suggest that it is even better if you brush barbecue sauce all over your meat before securing in between your outer peel pieces of pineapple skins. Once your coals have turned white and cooled down a bit you can place right on to the grate. Close the lid and grill until the middle reaches a safe 165 degrees.
Fresh Pineapple Recipes
Now how else would you use the inside other than just enjoying as a snack? We have made this green smoothie with pineapple with it. So healthy, but delish as well. I have a lot of ways but below are probably our most popular selections such as;
- Ninja Foodi pineapple chicken has a killer sauce to it.
- Use it to make pineapple upside down cake with yellow cake mix some night for a treat.
- You can use the same recipe to make pineapple upside down cupcakes too in far less time.
- For an appetizer you can make bacon wrapped pineapple bites.
And if you are making pulled pork for dinner, serve it on sliders with Hawaiian coleslaw too!
