IS IT RIPE?

While not the price I would have preferred to pay, when I saw pineapple in the grocery store for under $2.00, I brought two home. It’s been six or seven years since the last time I dehydrated fresh pineapple, so it is time to do it again.

Then I wondered: “how do I know these are ripe?”

The usual sniff test (you want it to smell sweet) does no good since I haven’t regained my sense of smell. So, I had to find other ways to determine if they are ready to process.

There were a lot of multi-step processes out in google-land to search through, but I settled on two tests that I can remember in the future. They are:

1. You want the skin of the pineapple to be more yellow and less green. (Brown is getting toward the rotting end of the spectrum, but don’t get rid of one just because it’s brown. Cut it open to see what can be salvaged.)
2. You can easily pluck a leaf from the top of the fruit.

Luckily, after sitting on my counter for two days, these pineapples are ready to process … tomorrow.