Pineapple

Transcript:

Hi! I'm Chef Jason Hill, here in the beautiful pineapple fields at Dole Plantation in Oahu. Let's go check it out.

Many people are surprised when they find out that the pineapple does not grow on a tree. The pineapple plant is relatively small, reaching between three to five feet tall. Peak season for Hawaiian pineapples is between April and May. Pineapple nutrition includes good sources of manganese, vitamin C, and B1. Some people say it's also a great pain reliever.

James Dole started his plantation here in 1901. Inside the retail store, you can buy fresh pineapples and sample their famous Dole pineapple whips.

Now that we have our fresh pineapple, here are a few tips on how to choose and cut a pineapple. Okay, when you're choosing your pineapple at the market, you want leaves that are as green as possible; a pineapple that is soft to the touch; and you're going to pick it up and smell the bottom, and you should have a sweet pineapple smell. Pineapples do not get sweeter after being picked, so be sure you get a good one right from the store.

All right, let's cut this guy up, and we're going to make a nice little presentation. First, I like to ah, what I call, give it a haircut. So, I like to use the leaf as a garnish for my little fruit platter. So, what I do is take my chef's knife at the base and just kind of scrape down, give it a little turn, and I'll do this a few times till you get a nice little tight garnish.

All right, now that we've trimmed our guy up and made him look a little nicer, we're going to go ahead and give it a first slice. Now, just tilt him on his side, and from the top here, I'm going to go up about an inch, and we're going to cut off this top for a garnish. Flip it around; we're going to cut off the base, go up about another inch, nice and straight as possible, right down with your knife.

Now we're going to shave off the skin. You want to come in about, maybe half an inch, and you're going to take your knife, you're going to kind of just go down. Kind of follow the shape of the pineapple. Okay, the side that I had a few divots on, I'm just going to go in a little bit deeper and take those out. You don't want to be chewing on those. They're sharp and…cut your lip. Who wants that?

Okay, now I'm going to take my knife; I'm going to line it up with the center of the core; I'm going to cut it in half by going straight down the pineapple. Now we're going to remove the core, because this is really tough and nobody wants to be eating that. Tucking my fingers, take my knife and I'm going down and I'm going to make a V shape to remove the core, just enough, and you can see it pops right out.

Now, to make your slices, I just flip it over, and you can go quarter-inch, half-inch. Now, I just transfer my slices to a little serving platter that you can lay out for your friends.

You know, there are a lot of great recipes out there for pineapple, from grilled pineapple to pineapple upside down cake, but in my opinion, you can't beat a fresh slice on its own. Thanks for tubing in. Oh, man, that's good!