Fresh pineap­ple can be cut, cored and peeled in a vari­ety of ways. Once we learn how, we adapt our meth­ods to how the fruit will be served.

A recent social media sen­sa­tion fea­tured a pineap­ple hack that had hun­dreds of thou­sands of pineap­ple lovers doubt­ing their tech­niques.

The Japan­ese Twit­ter share makes eat­ing pineap­ple as easy as peel­ing away each bite as if peel­ing away an arti­choke leaf.

There were many naysay­ers who went on to chal­lenge the hack with failed video ver­sions of pineap­ple rolling, cut­ting, carv­ing and pulling. It turns out, the smaller, snack pineap­ple ver­sions in the orig­i­nal video may be more accom­mo­dat­ing than what we typ­i­cally find in our local mar­kets.

In any event, its ter­rific to have such wide atten­tion paid to pineap­ples this time of year. Easter cel­e­bra­tions, along with upcom­ing grad­u­a­tions, Mother’s Day and other spring menus put pineap­ple in the spotlight.

Sweet and juicy, trop­i­cal pineap­ples are still viewed as sign of hos­pi­tal­ity. Once a rar­ity in the United States, they were served only on spe­cial occa­sions. We are lucky enough to have them avail­able year-​round.

Peak pineap­ple sea­son lasts from March until July when the fresh fruit is at its best. Native to South Amer­ica, Hawaii is now a lead­ing grower. The Hawai­ian ver­sion is the tall, cylin­dri­cal Cayenne―
a golden-​yellow pineap­ple with long, sword-​like leaves that sprout from a sin­gle tuft.

The shorter and plumper Red Span­ish pineap­ple, usu­ally from Florida or Puerto Rico, has red­dish gold skin and leaves that sprout from sev­eral tufts. The aver­age weight for each is between two and five pounds.

In the store, choose ones that feel heavy for their size. While larger fruits will have a greater pro­por­tion of edi­ble flesh, they make no dif­fer­ence in qual­ity over a small size pineap­ple.

Select one free of soft spots, mold, bruises and any dark­ened “eyes”. Those are all indi­ca­tions that fruit may be past its prime. Pineap­ple do not con­tinue to ripen once they’re picked.