[upbeat music]
- [Audience] How to slice every fruit!
[hammer smashing]
[audience cheering]
- Hi, I'm Frank.
I'm a chef at the Institute
of Culinary Education,
and today, we're gonna learn how to cut
every fruit.
- [Audience] Wow!
- Get out.
[Frank laughing]
[alarm ringing]
When you hear the hammer alarm,
you know what that means.
- [Audience] Use the hammer!
Small fruits.
Grapes.
- Would I ever slice a grape?
You can slice a grape, I have,
and if you're a professional chef,
your cooks hate you for it,
but if you ever want to slice a grape,
get a small paring knife.
There's two ways you can do it.
You can cut along, where the stem is
You can also slice it into five slices,
but you wanna cut them
right before you use them,
or else they're just gonna
get really weird and slimy.
- [Audience] Strawberries.
- This is a strawberry, okay.
Couple things you wanna do.
You wanna take off the hull,
give it a little twist.
If there's still a little
hard piece in there,
get a really sharp paring knife
and just the tip goes in
here, and you can turn
the strawberry around and
get that little hard piece
of stem out, if you want.
You can cut it in half and quarters,
or if you wanna slice it
for a nice tart or a salad,
but you just don't wanna get
that little piece of stem
in there, it's kind of like,
what's the word I'm
looking for, I guess, hard?
[Frank and audience laughing]
- [Audience] Fig.
These are figs.
A lot of times, you'll see these dry.
Fresh figs are a treat.
Just take the stem off,
and cut it in half,
but look how beautiful the flesh is,
and basically everything
on this fig is edible,
you just gotta be really careful with them
because they tend to break up,
so if you're gonna put figs on a salad
or in a dish, I would cut
them and then place them
on later on.
If you're gonna roast them, that's great,
just remember, they don't
like being beat up too much.
- [Audience] Whoa.
Plum.
- This is a plum, has a
little stone in the center,
really easy to take out.
So, all I'm really gonna do
is cut it down the center,
from the stem end, follow
it all the way around,
give it a twist, the seed comes out.
If you want, you can take your knife
and pull the seed out like this,
but I also like to cut it into quarters,
so I'll just cut it one more time,
give it a twist, and the
seed just pops right out.
From here, you can slice
the plum nice and thin.
I do recommend leaving
the skin on the plum,
I think the skin really
adds some sort of texture
and flavor to it.
- [Audience] Lime.
- This is a lime.
I'm gonna show you how
to cut them for tacos,
or beer, and this is how I do it.
Cut it in half, put it on the flat side,
cut it in half again,
and then I usually cut it
into little smaller pieces
because I'm gonna serve
it either on a plate
or stuff it in a beer, and
that's how you cut a lime.
- [Audience] Lemon.
- This is a lemon,
a lot of different ways you can cut this.
I'm gonna cut it into supremes,
a couple of ends off, just
past where the pith is,
and then I'm gonna peel
it all the way around.
I'm gonna follow the contour of the lemon,
trying to get all the pith off.
Get rid of our skin, and
then we're gonna take this
and cut it in between the segments,
just to get those supremes.
You can go back afterwards
and take out the seeds.
I'm just trying to cut on the edge of it,
so that I get nice, even slices of lemon,
and that's how I cut a lemon.
- [Audience] Kiwi berry.
- These are kiwi berries.
They are adorable.
- [Audience] Awe.
- What we're gonna do with kiwi berries is
just take the little stem
off, right in your mouth,
and we're gonna cut one open,
and look how beautiful that is.
- Ooh!
- There's not much you have
to do with them, cut them, serve them.
Kiwi berries, delicious, and adorable.
- [Audience] Longan.
- This is a longan fruit, or a longan.
They grow on trees, obviously,
they got the stems there,
and it's a close cousin of lychee fruit.
Really, all you wanna do
is kind of pierce the skin.
You can just kind of crack
it, and then open it up,
it kind of just squeezes
out into your hand.
You can cut it away from
the seed, but they tend
to cling to the seed a little,
and the flesh is kind of
this really cool translucent flesh,
and it's sweet, it's fragrant, it's juicy,
great for cocktails, great for desserts.
- [Audience] Gooseberries.
These are gooseberries.
They have this beautiful kind of husk.
It actually, when it hangs from the plant,
looks kind of like a lantern.
You peel the husk away,
and you're just basically
gonna cut it.
They have almost like a
citrus-y taste to them,
and just a little sour, but
it'd be a great condiment
for things that are fatty,
or even maybe something a little salty.
- [Audience] Prickly pear.
- This is a prickly pear.
A prickly pear is basically
the fruit from the top of a cactus.
All you really need to
do is cut off both ends.
It's got a beautiful flesh on the inside,
and you make a little incision,
and the skin should peel right away,
and you get this beautiful,
beautiful piece of fruit.
Most people just eat
this whole, like this,
but you can slice it,
and that is prickly pair.
- [Audience] Starfruit.
- This is a starfruit.
Not much to do to starfruit.
Basically, it comes in its own wrapper,
you eat the wrapper.
All you really need to do with
the starfruit is slice it.
Take the end and the top off.
Everything on the starfruit is edible,
and then you just cut it into slices,
you don't even need to
worry about the seeds,
and you eat it.
- [Audience] Rambutan.
- This is a rambutan,
or a bunch of rambutans.
So, what I like to do is
just make a little bit
of an incision there, and then
you can peel the skin away.
What this has in the center, though,
is a very hard seed, but if
you want to get the flesh off
of the seed, what you can
do is cut around the seed.
It's floral, fragrant,
it's also really juicy, goes
really well with gin and vodka.
When you get a bite of it,
you're not really so sure what it is.
It has that kind of like,
sweet, fragrant candy flavor.
- [Audience] Passion fruit.
- This is a passion
fruit, delicious, sour,
not hard to process.
Chef knife, cut it around
the equator, open her up.
Oh, looks good.
This is basically what you wanna see,
nice kind of juicy passion fruit.
Super sour, but delicious.
- [Audience] Mandarin orange.
- This is a mandarin.
Usually, what I'll do is I'll
just get my thumb in there,
right where the stem is,
and I'll peel it by hand,
and then all you really need to do is pull
the sections apart and
you eat the sections,
nothing else to be done.
Mandarin.
- [Audience] Persimmon.
- This is a persimmon.
It's delicious, but it can also catch you,
and if you cut this when it's not ripe,
and you eat it, it has a very
drying effect on your tongue,
and all I do is cut it open.
When I want to take any stem out,
I cut it in half and I make
a little bit of a V cut,
and then you can just
cut this into slices,
you can peel it, or you can eat the peel.
This one looks like it needs to just ripen
just a little bit more.
It's kind of sweet, it's getting there.
- [Audience] Medium fruits.
[audience cheering]
Pepino melon.
- This is a pepino melon.
When I hear pepino, I think
cucumber because pepino
is how you say cucumber in Spanish.
So, we crack it open, oh, look at that.
I'm gonna give it a whiff.
[Frank sniffing]
Um...
[Frank sniffing]
Smells like a cross between
a cucumber and a melon.
Let me cut this in half.
The skin kind of peels away really nice.
I'm gonna take some of the seed pod out.
It's got a nice, soft flesh,
and exactly like it advertises,
it tastes like a cross between
a cucumber and a melon.
- [Audience] Quince.
- This is a quince,
kinda looks like a cross
between an apple and a pear.
Quince needs to be processed
before you actually eat it,
and the way that I do
that is I'm gonna cut off
both ends and peel.
The aroma when you first
cut it is just amazing.
It's super fragrant, but you can see,
if you look at the flesh, it's really dry,
so quince needs to be
cooked for a little while.
Take off the peels, cut it in half,
and then in quarters,
and then we're gonna
just take out the center,
just like an apple.
Get in there, angle your knife
down to take out the seeds,
and you want to make sure
that you get all of that
kind of center pith out,
and then you just dice it.
This or the pomegranate
was in the Garden of Eden.
- [Audience] Whoa.
- It wasn't an apple, it was
a quince or a pomegranate,
a little trivia. [laughs]
- [Audience] Cherimoya.
- This is a cherimoya.
I'm just gonna cut this in half,
and there's a bunch of
black seeds in the center.
It has a white kind of creamy flesh,
and you kinda gotta pull
it away from the seeds
to eat it.
You're basically gonna
pull this away and eat it,
spit the seeds out and eat
the flesh off of the skin,
and that's pretty good.
- [Audience] Apple.
- This is an apple.
Two pieces of equipment, I
have a peeler and a knife.
First thing I do is peel the apple.
Take the top off with the
peeler, in one round ring.
Take the bottom off in a round ring,
and then just take the skin off, okay?
Peeled, cut my apple in quarters,
and then I take the core out.
- [Audience] Dragon fruit.
- This is a dragon fruit,
and you'll see these a lot
in Chinatowns across the United States,
but it's really easy to
take care of and cut open.
You just want to cut off both ends,
look at that beautiful inside
and the skin, beautiful colors.
You wanna cut off both ends,
and then all you really have
to do is score it,
and the skin should peel right off,
you just get your finger
underneath the skin,
and it peels right off,
and then it has this beautiful interior.
I'm gonna cut this in half,
but look at that, looks like sesame seeds.
Kind of reminds me of cucumbers a little.
That's a dragon fruit.
- [Audience] Avocado.
- This is an avocado.
This, I cut in my hand.
I take my chef knife, I'm gonna just cut,
and instead of moving the
knife, I move the avocado.
I just roll my avocado,
leave the knife stationary,
okay, twist, beautiful,
that one's perfectly ripe.
This is where people get stabbed and cut,
and they make specialty knives for this.
You don't have to really slam
it, just a nice little tap,
and you see how far the knife goes in?
Twist it, and then to get the seed off,
instead of grabbing at it, you
just take your pointer finger
and your thumb and you pinch
it off and it falls off.
Give it to your kids, put
it in a glass of water
and some toothpicks, you'll
have an avocado tree.
When it comes to this,
there's a couple of ways
you can do this.
You can cut this in half, and
usually the peel will just
come right off, and this is,
you can dice that, put it in a salad.
You can also get a paring knife
and do the crosshatch method
if you're gonna make guacamole.
Put the knife in one
way, go the other way,
and then usually what I do
is I just give it a squeeze
and it pops right out.
If you squeeze it, you kind
of start with a nice dice
of avocado and you don't
have to take it out
and dice it, it's just pretty much already
diced for you when you
take it out of the skin.
- [Audience] Peach.
- This is a peach, and this
is how you cut a peach.
Two types of peaches, a
freestone and a clingstone.
Freestone peach that I have here,
the pit will actually come
out just by kind of twisting
and a little prying.
Clingstone, you kind of have to cut away,
and all I do is this, cut it
in half with a paring knife,
give it a twist, you
see the pit comes out,
and instead of kind of digging at that
and stabbing myself, I'm
gonna cut one more time,
and pull this away,
and then the pit just pulls away.
Pit goes in the garbage,
and then you can slice this
however you want.
If you're gonna do a
tart, you can just slice,
or you can just eat it out of hand.
- [Audience] Pomegranate.
- This is a pomegranate.
There's a lot of different
ways to process these,
I'm gonna show you two ways.
The first way, I have
a bowl, I have spoon,
and I have a pomegranate,
and I'm gonna cut it in half.
So, some of the seeds might
get cut, but it's no big deal.
I put the cut side of the
pomegranate into my palm,
and I get a spoon that's
fairly heavy and I tap,
and as I tap, you can
see that I'm rotating.
Keep tapping until all of them are out.
See, I got most of them out,
and then you can go back and
if there's any little pieces
of the inner membrane,
you can take it out,
and that's it, that's how
you cut a pomegranate.
- [Audience] Orange.
- This is an orange.
Most people just peel this in
hand, and eat it like that.
I'm gonna show you the way chefs do it.
What we're gonna do is take the
top and the bottom off first
and then we're gonna peel the orange,
trying to hold the shape of it
and get all of the pith off.
What we're gonna make
today is called supremes.
Supreme just basically means
the best part of the orange,
and then we get our small paring knife,
and we're gonna cut
sections, just on the inside
of each of the segments.
Supreme orange.
- [Audience] Yellow plantain.
- This is a yellow plantain,
same as the green plantain,
except it's just a little riper,
a little softer, it's had
a little time to mature
and get a little sweeter.
We're gonna process this
and take out the flesh.
What I usually do with this,
I cut off both ends, I do a
little score just with the tip
of the knife, once, twice,
and I get my finger under the skin,
and the peel just comes off like,
almost like a regular banana.
It's super starchy, it's
actually a little sticky
right now, you wanna cook
this before you eat it,
and before you cook it,
usually I'll slice it
into nice thick slices, I'll take this,
deep fry it, give it a
little bit of a smash,
and then fry it again, that's a maduro,
maduros are usually something
from a sweet plantain.
- [Audience] Green plantain.
- Similar to any other
plantain, this one just happens
to be on the unripe side.
It doesn't, hasn't turned
yellow yet, hasn't gotten dark,
and it's not really super
sweet, it's really starchy.
Gonna cut this the same way we would cut
any other plantain, I take the ends off.
The flesh is a little different color,
it's usually a little pinker.
Just the tip of the
knife to score the skin.
It's a little harder to get
off than the yellow plantain,
but if you get your hand under it,
your finger under it, you peel it away.
The difference between
this and a yellow plantain
is sometimes the green
plantain tends to oxidize.
The flesh is a lot
firmer, you're not gonna
eat this like this, it's
probably not gonna be
all that delicious.
This is where they'll make
plantain chips out of,
or you can make tostones,
you take these, you'll cut them in slices,
fry them until they're soft,
and then you smash them
and fry them again,
and it makes a tostone.
- [Audience] Mango.
- This is a mango.
The way I cut a mango
is, I need a paper towel,
a chef knife, and a peeler,
and I'll just peel it in my hand.
Once I get about to here,
I'm gonna take my paper towel
and put the mango in the
paper towel so it doesn't slip
and I don't cut myself with the peeler.
Get all the peel off,
and you'll see that if I lay it flat,
it's kind of fat, and I wanna
do it on the skinny side,
so you'll see it's skinny,
the seed runs this way
with the mango.
So I'll take the mango, stand it up,
go about a third of the way in and slice,
one lobe falls off, the
other lobe falls off.
The seed, like I said, is
gonna be right around there,
so I'm gonna cut the edges off.
Now, with this piece, that's
the treat for the chef,
you eat it, but this, you
cut however you want it,
in slices, or in dices.
Same thing goes for the flesh over here,
you can just dice it up
or cut it in thin slices,
and that's how you cut a mango.
Here's another way to cut a mango.
Don't need to peel it, again,
you want to stand the
mango up, not lay it flat.
You cut close to the seed,
on the other side.
You cut the flesh off on this side.
Get a paring knife, I'm
just gonna make some
crosshatch marks, go one way,
I turn it, and I go the other way,
and then you can turn it
out and pop the mango out
and eat it like that.
Mmm, that's delicious.
- [Audience] Grapefruit.
- This is a grapefruit.
This is a pink grapefruit,
I'm pretty sure it's a pink grapefruit,
I don't have x-ray vision,
but usually you can see
from the skin.
Similar to most citrus fruits,
this is what I would do.
Take off the ends,
and then I basically peel off the skin,
and then you just find the center,
and you take out the segments.
[alarm ringing]
- [Audience] Use the hammer!
Use the hammer!
- And what we're gonna do now,
we're gonna smash this grapefruit.
Ready?
[audience cheering]
It's gonna get messy.
Oh boy, that's...
Visual. [laughs]
- [Audience] Large fruits.
Durian.
- Okay, you gotta watch yourself,
this is a little dangerous,
a durian, or a durian fruit,
notorious for being stinky,
not allowed in bus stations,
not allowed on trains or airplanes.
They're basically sequestered.
They are the scourge of
southeast Asia, okay?
So, what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna take a towel
and hold it and I'm just
gonna score it, right?
The skin isn't, it looks
a lot tougher than it is.
I'm gonna score it all the way around,
and it doesn't smell that bad.
Usually, it's a little stinkier, right,
and then I'm gonna get my towels,
and I'm gonna lean on it,
and I'm gonna pry it apart, okay?
You pry it apart, and this
is what you eat inside,
and this is how you eat it.
There's a little seed inside,
you wanna take the seed out,
and it kind of smells
like onions and feet,
and that is a durian.
- [Audience] Papaya.
- This is a papaya, okay?
I like to use my knife, and
what I'm gonna do with this
is I'm gonna cut off both ends,
and that's a really nice
looking papaya inside.
It should have that nice kind
of pink blush on the inside.
So, I'm gonna cut this
in half just to make it
a little more management,
and I'm gonna lay it
on its flat side and
then I'm gonna peel it.
I'm not too worried about the
seeds getting on my board.
The seeds are actually edible.
I wouldn't say they're delicious,
but they kind of like,
remind me a little bit of,
a bland caviar.
I'm gonna get rid of all the skin,
I'm gonna put this one aside for now.
The seeds, I'm gonna put into a bowl,
I'm gonna pull this over to the edge,
cut this in half, open her up,
and then you just get your bowl,
scrape your seeds and pulp out,
and you can do this pretty
much however you want.
You can slide it, cut it into large dice,
and that's how you cut a papaya.
- [Audience] Pineapple.
This is a pineapple, and this
is how you cut a pineapple.
We have a couple different
ways of doing this,
but this is the way that I would do it.
Take my pineapple, take
the top and the bottom off.
I lay it on the the flat
side and then I'm just gonna
peel away the skin.
I make sure that I go deep
enough to get all these
little eyes out, so you
get most of the eyes off.
I take the pineapple, I split
it right down the middle,
split it right down the middle again,
and I get it into quarters,
and right down here in the
middle of the pineapple
is really fibrous and kind of woody.
What I'll do is I'll lay it on its side,
and take out that center core,
so once you get that core out,
you can make it into some nice slices.
I have it nice and flat here, really nice.
[audience clapping]
Beautiful sliced pineapple.
Here's another way to cut a pineapple,
and if you're gonna serve the
pineapple on maybe a buffet
or something that you
want a little more visual,
this is the other way you can do it.
You take the pineapple
and you're gonna cut it
directly in half with the skin on,
and you're gonna go all the way through
the top of the pineapple as well, okay,
and it looks really pretty like that.
- Wow.
- And then you're
gonna quarter it,
all the way through, try
not to stab yourself.
I'm gonna lay it on its side and take out
most of the core.
I'm gonna take off the end,
and then we're gonna cut
it, not all the way through,
you can do it with a paring
knife or a chef knife,
we're gonna cut it almost
all the way through,
and then we're gonna
cut it down this side,
and then down this side
so that they pop out,
and that's the way you can
cut a pineapple for like,
a buffet or something
that you can just serve
and make it look pretty.
- [Audience] Cantaloupe.
- This is a cantaloupe,
and this is how you cut a cantaloupe.
In a professional kitchen, you always want
to get things flat.
This is round, it rolls around our board,
so I'm gonna first do is cut our ends off,
and then I'm gonna peel it with my knife.
Follow the contour of the cantaloupe,
get all the skin off.
You don't want any of that green pith.
It's not bad for you, you're
not gonna get sick from it,
but it just doesn't taste really good,
it's just kind of bland and plain.
Follow the contour so you get
that nice cantaloupe shape.
We're gonna cut it in half,
and then we're gonna remove all the seeds,
and we're just gonna scrape the seeds out,
put it on its flat side.
You can cut these little ends off,
those are snacks for you as the chef,
and then you slice if you're
gonna do a fruit plate,
or you can just cut it into
slices and leave it like that
or dice it.
That's how I cut a cantaloupe.
- [Audience] Pomelo.
- This is a pomelo.
It's a close cousin to
the grapefruit, oranges,
it's a citrus fruit.
I take the top and the bottom off,
make a little bit of a score,
not all the way through,
but just to break the skin.
Skin can be used for candying,
but the skin and pith tend to be used
in the pomelo, as well as the fruit.
Crack it open, you got
this really kind of cool
sarlacc pit, alien look to it,
and then you're just gonna
peel off these little nodes.
I've seen different vodkas
flavored with pomelo.
It almost has kind of a savory flavor,
but it does smell a little
more like an air freshener
than a [laughs] than something
you really wanna eat.
- [Audience] Pumpkin.
- So, this is a pumpkin.
This is classically what
people use for jack-o-lanterns.
I'm just gonna whack this
sucker in half, okay?
I'm just gonna cut the stem right off,
and then I'm just gonna
cut it directly in half,
and I'm gonna kinda do what I call
the axe murderer on it.
I'm gonna stab right
through, push my knife
all the way down and kind
of just pull my knife down,
right, if I just plunge the knife through
and kind of make a
guillotine motion a little,
it cuts in half really easy, okay.
You scoop the seeds out and
when you have the oven on,
you can toast the seeds.
I usually just wash
these with a little water
to get all this stuff off,
toast the seeds right next to it.
- [Audience] Honeydew.
- This is a honeydew, and I'm
gonna show you how to cut it.
What I like to do with honeydews
is square off the ends.
Round things on cutting
boards are dangerous
and you cut your fingers a lot,
and then I use a small chef knife,
and I use that with a
little slight sawing motion,
and then we cut it in half.
Okay, then we would get a bowl.
I'm gonna scrape out all the
seeds and all the seed pods,
what holds the seeds in there,
and then what I do is I'll
turn this on the flat side,
cut it one more time, cut it again.
With this, we could cut it just like this
or we can dice,
and then you can just slice
it and I think it makes
nice slices for a fruit platter.
Great.
- [Audience] Watermelon.
- This is a watermelon,
and this is how you cut a watermelon.
Watermelons can be a little
unruly, they're really big,
they roll around a lot,
so what I normally do is,
I'll cut the ends off,
give myself a flat side,
and if you wanna eat that, you can,
and then I lay it on its flat side,
so it's easy to cut, and
then I'm gonna just cut it
right down the center, try and
get it as even as possible,
just so it looks good, okay,
open her up, put this on the side,
cut it down the center again,
and they're we're gonna cut it
like we're at a barbecue.
You can cut it one more time
if the watermelon's really big
but then you just cut it into slices.
So, what you can also do, if you want,
is after you have your
slices, you can do a little
cross cut here, take
these little edges off,
so that when you eat
it, you don't get that
watermelon on your face,
it'll give you a cleaner bite,
and it looks like a little house.
[alarm ringing]
Oh boy.
[alarm ringing]
You guys ready for this?
- [Audience] Use the hammer!
Use the hammer!
- Okay, you guys ready?
Again, we're going for maximum,
maximum destruction here.
Okay, you ready?
[audience cheering]
Should've brought a
second chef jacket, guys.
[Frank laughing]
I might not have cut
every type of fruit today,
but if you kind of just look at it
and see how it's shaped, you
can pretty much figure out
how you wanna cut it every single time.
There was some easy ones today,
there were some harder ones,
but don't be afraid, what's
the worst that can happen?
[audience cheering]
