- 2 days ago
In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto shares 36 hacks for your fruit. From how to cut mango, pomegranate, watermelon, citrus, and avocado to storing berries, preventing fruit flies, and reducing food waste, Frank’s chef hacks are sure to save you time in the kitchen, keep your produce fresher for longer, and help you get the most out of your fruit at home.
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Kitchen furnished by IKEA
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Today I'm sharing fruit hacks. These are the hacks that I learned throughout my years in the kitchen.
00:04I teach these to my students and now I'm going to share them with you.
00:10I love bananas. And if you have bananas that are going to sit on the counter at room temperature,
00:16the best way to slow down the ripening is to take something and wrap up the stems. Bananas
00:21give off a gas that lets them ripen, but this is going to stop that gas from coming out of
00:26the
00:26bananas and it's ripening slower. So say you have a bowl of fruit and this mango, it's a little on
00:32the underripe side, or maybe the avocado needs to get a little softer. Bananas gas help other fruits
00:38ripen. So if you want things to ripen faster, put it with a banana. If you don't, keep the bananas
00:44far
00:44away in a different space. Have you ever noticed that sometimes when your fruit has been sitting
00:50around a while, you still have to get the little fruit flies buzzing around? Keep your wine corks,
00:54put them in with your fruit. Natural wine cork will absorb some moisture from the fruit. It also
00:59releases a scent that the flies don't like. I do this at home. I put a couple of corks in
01:04with my
01:04fruit basket and I never have problems with flies. I know everyone's had this issue before. You have
01:09bananas that are going dark and I've seen people just take the bananas and put them in the freezer.
01:13Have you ever tried to peel a frozen banana? It is a pain in the rear end. So what I
01:17do,
01:17I peel them first and they go into a Ziploc bag. Lay them flat. Don't pile them up and you
01:23can take one
01:24banana out at a time. When I'm ready to make banana bread, I take the bananas out of the freezer
01:28first
01:29and put them in a bowl. And by the time I collect my other ingredients, they're ready to go to
01:33make
01:33the bread. When you're choosing citrus fruit for maximum juiciness, the smooth limes always give
01:42off more juice than the bumpy ones. Bumpy lime first. Now we do the smooth lime. You can see the
01:49difference. The bumpy lime, the firmer one, and then the other lime definitely gives off more juice
01:55every single time. One of the things I like to do when citrus is abundant and cheap is squeeze it
02:01and
02:01freeze it. You get that really nice hit of lemon without any of that kind of cooked or old taste
02:06flavor.
02:06Once they're frozen solid, pop them out into a Ziploc bag. And anytime you need a little pop of lemon,
02:12making like a pan sauce, pop a cube out and you're good to go. I love citrus fruit. And one
02:18of the
02:18ways that we used to cut it in restaurants to make it a little fancier is called the Supreme. This
02:23is
02:23mainly for a garnish for a salad or for something on like a ceviche. So I have an orange and
02:28what I'm
02:29going to do is I'm going to cut off both ends and then peel the orange, leaving no pith. The
02:33white part
02:34is the pith and it tends to be like a little spongy, sometimes a little bitter. You don't want any
02:38of
02:38that white stuff on the outside of our orange. The knife is a small paring knife. I'm kind of slicing
02:44or sawing around. That sawing motion helps you cut faster. You can see that there's a natural
02:50separation. I cut down alongside of it and then I cut down on the other side. And once you get
02:55the
02:55first slice out, you can just turn your knife and they pop out. If you're not comfortable with that,
03:00just make the V cut. I always feel like cutting fruit for people is a severe act of love. If
03:05you do this
03:06for the people in your life, they'll be like, oh my gosh, this person must really like me.
03:09But it's just gorgeous. In front of me, I have a bunch of mandarin orange peels, but you can do
03:14this with any citrus peel. I'm going to make a cleaning solution. Don't throw them away. You can
03:18save them. And I'm just going to stuff them in a jar, pack them in pretty good. And then I
03:23have
03:23some white distilled vinegar. It's the stuff you buy in the gallon jugs. Seal it up, put it in like
03:29a
03:29cool dry place. And after two weeks, you'll have a really nice cleaning solution. I'm going to dilute it.
03:34Two parts vinegar solution to about one part water. Get yourself a spray bottle and clean away.
03:41It smells a little like vinegar, but mostly like oranges. Good, safe, environmentally friendly
03:47cleaner. Avocados, as with any vegetable or fruit, I always look for heavy for their size. I also don't
03:56want it to be too squishy. Get a little squeeze and it's giving back. If that stem pops off, it's
04:01getting
04:01to the point where it's ripe. If you see an avocado that's not ripe, that stem doesn't pop off very
04:06easily. When I cut an avocado, I get my knife. It hits the seed and I just roll it on
04:12the cutting
04:12board. You then twist. Take the knife. Don't slam it into the avocado. Just give it a light tap and
04:19twist. And this is where I feel people get cut. They start trying to pry it off with their hands.
04:23Don't do that. All you're going to do is pinch it. Push down with your pointer finger and your
04:28thumb and it pops right off the knife. If you want to get all fancy, peel the avocado. Slice
04:34it nice and thin. Lay it down. Season that puppy up with a little salt and pepper and you have
04:40a nice fancy avocado toast for your besties. Now say you have to make guacamole for a crowd.
04:46This is the way I would do it. I got a bowl, cooling rack, and all you got to do
04:49is take your
04:50avocado. Press through that rack. Don't even have to peel it. Chopped avocado in seconds.
04:59Apples are one of the staple fruits in my house. The easiest way, fastest way I find to cut an
05:03apple
05:04is this. You just cut it in quarters and then just cut the core out. You can go from here
05:08and you can
05:09slice it or you can go from here and you can dice it as well. You're going for speed. This
05:14is the way
05:15to do it. Sometimes when you're working with apples, you cut the apple and it starts to brown.
05:19And the way that you can stop it from oxidizing, get a little lemon juice and rub it on there.
05:24I really don't use lemon unless I want it there for a flavor. If I'm doing preparations where the
05:29apples are going to get browned, like apple pie filling, I don't worry about oxidation. I'm going
05:34to brown those apples anyway. If I cut this apple for a salad, I'm going to slice what I need
05:38when I
05:39need it. I'm not going to kind of cut it ahead and leave it in lemon juice or water.
05:46I wash most of my berries and then I like to store them in the container they came in. Take
05:51a paper towel, put it in the bottom. And what this paper towel does is it wicks away any excess
05:56moisture
05:56and the berries are going to last a day or two longer. One thing I don't do though is rinse
06:02my raspberries. Raspberries are super delicate. They also have that little hole in there that holds
06:06onto moisture. What I do with them, take them out of the package, get a paper towel, and then I
06:11transfer
06:12my berries delicately into a separate container. The other container tends to hold in the moisture
06:17and I want the moisture to get out of these because the wetter they are, the faster they go. And
06:23in my
06:23house, if it's visually open, it will be eaten. If it's closed away, it never gets eaten. And then we
06:29have berry soup in the bottom of a container. Eat them quickly, store them properly, and it'll save you a
06:34lot
06:34of money. Sometimes your berries are going south. They are not going to last another day. What I
06:39like to do when that happens is make a compote. It gives my berries a little more staying power,
06:44a little bit of lemon juice. Lemon juice is just for flavor, sugar. My heat's at high right now. Once
06:50I
06:50get the berries breaking down, I'm going to lower the heat. One thing I do want to say is if
06:54the berries
06:54are bad, throw them away. Don't make this compote out of them. I like this on vanilla ice cream. Put
06:59it on
06:59toast with butter, cocktails. Using it in cocktails instead of simple syrup. Put them through a fine
07:05strainer and just press them through so I get all the juice out. If you like that chunkiness, leave
07:10the chunks in there. Chill it down while it's in the bowl. If I'm not going to use it right
07:14away,
07:14I'll throw it in the freezer. You can even store it in small Ziploc bags if you want.
07:21In front of me, I have three watermelons. All the same, but all very different. You can see these
07:27two watermelons have a decent weight to them. They're heavy for their size. I want them to be
07:32heavy for their size. These are smaller, but heavier than this one. Next thing I'm looking for
07:37is this nice yellow patch. The yellow patch is where it sits on the ground. It usually tells you
07:42it's fairly sweet. It's ripe. It's ready to go. The one in the center, I think is probably the most
07:47visually appealing, but this is probably the last one I would choose out of the bunch. I'd probably go
07:52with this one first, this one second, and this one third. I'm sorry. When I was a kid,
07:57watermelons are always these giant affairs, like giant watermelons. You can still get them,
08:01but for the most part, that watermelons nowadays are bred to be a little smaller.
08:04As with all fruits that are round, I cut off the ends first so I can start with a flat
08:09surface.
08:10So just kind of jab my knife in there, down and through. When you cover the knife down and through,
08:16it's going to slice nice and even. Cut it in half. I keep my fingers out of the way, down
08:21on one side,
08:23go down on the other, cut down and through, and now we can cut our slices. You get that classic
08:30watermelon slice where you can eat down to the rind and you're good to go.
08:37Grapes are one of those fruits that you can just easily sit there and pick them off of the bunch,
08:42but when we're doing them in restaurants, chances are you're going to pick them off the bunch and
08:46prepare them. For like salads, we like to cut them in half. We get two deli container lids. We're going
08:52to
08:52take our grapes, put the other lid upside down, and just kind of go through them and saw through them.
08:57And you get these really nice grape halves.
09:04Pomegranates are one of the coolest fruits you'll ever see. I used to use these a lot when I worked
09:08in a Mediterranean slash Middle Eastern restaurant. So the fast one we're going to do is this way.
09:12I cut it in half. I cut into some of those, but that's okay. I put it cut side down
09:17in my hands
09:18and then I get a spoon and I tap. I'm turning it with my pinky and my thumb. You're going
09:24to get
09:24most of those seeds out. End of the day, it works. But then I saw this other method. Cut around
09:30this
09:31part and peel that back. So you can see there's sections. And I'm going to run my knife down the
09:37pomegranate where those sections are and then peel it back. You pop them out. Make sure they go
09:43everywhere. No matter what you do with pomegranates, it's going to make a complete mess. It's not as
09:47quick as the other way, but it is definitely the most effective way to get really nice whole seeds
09:52without cutting into them.
09:57Good thing about peaches. You have a lot of them at the end of the summer. You can freeze them.
10:01Good for pies. Good for jams and jellies. So a good peach doesn't have a lot of blemishes. Doesn't
10:06have a lot of pushed in marks. You want to squeeze it and it has a little give to it,
10:11but not mushiness.
10:12What I like to do is cut them into slices. I go around the diameter of the peach, peel it
10:18in half,
10:18and then you can just slice the peach like this. Even though they might stick to the seed, you can
10:24peel off around the seed. And then you get some really nice slices for your friends. If you don't
10:29want to hold the peach in your hand, just leave the knife in one place and roll the peach around.
10:34Slice around the pit, and you have a lovely sliced peach. Anytime I freeze fruit, I try and flat pot
10:42pack it. If it's just one layer, they're not going to stick to each other as much and they'll defrost
10:46really quick. I think a lot of people might turn their nose up at frozen fruit, but a lot of
10:50times
10:51when you're buying commercial frozen fruit, it's picked a little later in its ripeness and you're
10:56getting something that might be a little sweeter, a little juicier. Yes, it's going to be frozen,
11:00so you have to kind of like account for that, but you're getting a really good product with frozen
11:04fruit. Good for pies, good for jams and jellies. So I have a lot of peaches and I cannot stand
11:10peach
11:11fuzz, and I want to take the skin off. And this is what we do in restaurants called blanching. Just
11:15make a little X in the bottom. This just makes it easier to peel later. You have a starting point.
11:21Just going to move these around, loosen the skin. Once the skin starts to peel back, drop it in your
11:27ice
11:27water. It stops them from cooking. And once it's cool, you can take it out of the water and the
11:33skin peels back nice and easy. I'm just going to cut it so you can eat it in slices and
11:42eat around the
11:42rind. I'm going to just quarter it. This center part here tends to be really chewy, so I'm going to
11:49lay
11:49it on its side and cut out that really woody part. And with these slices, you can kind of eat
11:54around
11:55the peel. Get it done really fast. Yeah, people have to do a little work when they're eating it,
12:00but quick and easy. No fuss, no muss, right?
12:06Mango scare people. They're little slippery buggers and sometimes they get away from you. So let me show
12:10you a couple of ways that I like to cut mangoes so that they're a little easier to eat. You
12:15can see a
12:15mango has a flat side and a round side. The seed is in the center of this. So I want
12:21to cut off the big,
12:22meaty sides or the cheeks first. The seed kind of goes straight through here. So I cut off these
12:28two ends. I peel around the seed. These are for like the pieces of mango that we're going to use
12:33for like purees and stuff like that. But I have my four little cheeks. And what I like to do
12:38with
12:38this is just cut down, make X's, pop it open, and you can eat the mango straight off of the
12:44skin.
12:45The other way you can do this is by peeling the mango. It gets like really slippery and you have
12:50basically a knife in your hand. The towel helps me from not slipping. Cut off your cheeks. So you
12:58get some good clean mango for slicing and dicing. This is more of a preparation. I'm going to use
13:03it in something or in a recipe. So a lot of the techniques are from what I've learned working
13:08in restaurants, but they all make you more efficient, organized, whether it's at home or it's at the job.
13:13It just helps you be better at what you do. We gave you a lot of fruit hacks. I know
13:20it's a lot,
13:20but I'm sure there's some we missed. Put them down in the comments. Tell us what we missed.
13:23We love hearing from you guys.
13:25We love hearing from you guys.
13:25We love hearing from you guys.
13:25Let's go.
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