Pineapple is a tropical fruit; few people in Russia try to grow it: it is in principle possible, but difficult. Fortunately, in our time, you can almost always buy it in a store. True, the product is perishable, and it is stored for a very short time. How to properly store pineapple so that by the time of use it is "in the juice"?
How to store pineapple at home
Of course, for pineapple to be a pleasure, you must first choose it correctly. Without considering here all the known methods (touch, mash, smell), we recall only that pineapples, like all fruits, have different varieties intended for one or another purpose.
Dessert varieties have large flakes, and specimens with small flakes are most likely to have a “technical” purpose for preparing various dishes: they have a more acidic taste.
In addition, on sale you can find pineapples, both ready-to-eat and unripe. Naturally, almost all tropical fruits for export are removed to some extent immature: they have to travel to other countries for a long time. Unripe pineapple is easier to keep at home than ripe, it is usually done in the refrigerator. And if the attracting specific aroma spreads from the fruit, it is better not to store it, but to cut it and give yourself pleasure immediately.
How much pineapple is stored at home
In the usual state, that is, in the form of an unfrozen fruit, pineapple cannot be stored for a long time: in this it resembles berries that are well known to us, such as raspberries or strawberries. Actually, something in taste and aroma even makes them related. For temporary storage, it must immediately be placed in the refrigerator, in the fruit compartment, where the temperature is 6-9 aboutFROM. Under such conditions, the fruit, if it has not yet matured before purchase, will remain for 10-12 days. At a higher temperature, ripening will continue, and it will deteriorate "from old age", and at a low positive temperature, this tropical resident will simply begin to rot.
But even in the refrigerator you don’t need to put pineapple just like that: a small package is required, otherwise he will give all his aroma to the neighbors on the shelf, and from them they will pick up not always pleasant smells. At the very least, it should be wrapped in several layers of clean paper, and then placed in a loose plastic bag. Loosely closed: at a humidity of more than 90%, the fruit may become moldy. Periodically, the package must be turned over, allowing the pineapple to lie on different sides. View paper at the same time: if it is very wet, replace. View the fruit itself: if dark spots appear, you can not store longer. Cut the spots and eat the rest. Multiple fruits cannot be packed in one bag.
If you just put the pineapple in a bag, the condensate released from it can cause rotting, so you must first wrap the fruit in paper
If you don’t put ripe pineapple in the refrigerator at all, you should eat it no later than tomorrow, for a maximum of two days, if stored in a ventilated dark place, it will retain its best properties. Maybe it will not spoil at all in 3-4 days, but the taste will not be the same, and the processes of tissue disintegration, accompanied by rotting of individual parts of the fetus, will already begin. Of course, this applies to those specimens that were not completely ripe at the time of purchase. If the pineapple is peeled and cut into pieces, it is impossible to store it without a refrigerator for three hours; in the fridge, the slices lie for a couple of days, but when not covered up, they dry out and become unappetizing.
How to keep pineapple for a long time
Recipes for long-term storage of fresh pineapple in principle are absent: there are still no such low-quality varieties, such as apples. For long-term storage (more than two weeks) you have to do something with pineapple.
The usual processing methods are simple: drying, freezing or canning.
Do not be afraid of these words, pineapple in any form is very tasty, does not lose its flavor, but, of course, I want to enjoy a fresh product. And more or less similar to a fresh fruit, only frozen pineapple remains. At the same time, vitamins (including ascorbic acid) and the substance responsible for its taste and aroma, bromelain, are almost completely preserved.
Canned pineapple is stored for up to a year, dried - for six months, and frozen - less, but it will be "almost like fresh." Canned pineapple in taste and smell is very similar to fresh, tasty and sweet syrup from it, but canned food - they are canned food.
When canning, pineapple is first poured with sugar syrup, which after that becomes very tasty
Dried pineapple is essentially candy or, if dried with added sugar, candied fruit: this is an amateur product. And when frozen, pineapple does not lose either taste or aroma, the flesh will remain as juicy, only the juice will flow much more.
Dried pineapple is a kind of candy, but the taste of these candies is pineapple
Before sending the fruit into the freezer, it is better to prepare the fruit, since it will then be much more difficult to cut the whole frozen fruit, and the loss of juice during such a cut will be too great. Pineapple is washed, peeled and cut into pieces of a size convenient for subsequent consumption. Stacked in a plastic bag and sent to the freezer. Instead of a package, you can take a food-grade plastic container of a convenient size.
Freezers are known to have different minimum temperatures (usually from -6 to -24 aboutC), for pineapple there is no big difference: in almost unchanged form, its nutritional properties at any negative temperature will last three or four months. And under no circumstances should pineapples be thawed repeatedly.
For freezing, pineapple can be cut into slices of any convenient shape and size.
How to ripen a pineapple at home
If the pineapple is bought immature, and it is supposed to eat it in a few days, it is necessary to maintain the right balance so that it has time to ripen, but does not have time to deteriorate. It is not necessary to immediately put it in the refrigerator, you should give it a try to ripen it at room temperature and humidity of about 80%. Excess moisture can lead to rotting, lowering - to dry. During storage, you need to keep it in a ventilated room and periodically turn it over with different sides, and when buying several copies do not put them close to each other and to any walls.
It will be optimal under such conditions if it takes no more than a week to ripen, and preferably about three days; if required sooner, you need to cut the leaves from the pineapple and put it with the top down. The well-known accelerator of ripening of many fruits is ethylene. Naturally, take this gas (the simplest unsaturated hydrocarbon C2N4) there is nowhere at home, but it is produced in small quantities during storage by some fruits, including pears and apples traditional for Russia. Therefore, for high-quality ripening of pineapple, you can put it next to them. Periodically, the safety of the pineapple should be checked: the process of ripening and subsequent damage can go at an uncontrolled speed.
Neighborhood with apples allows the pineapple to reach a ripe state faster
Pineapple is a tropical fruit, unsuitable for long-term storage, but it is usually possible to keep it fresh for a couple of weeks. If longer storage is necessary, freezing comes to the rescue, after which the pleasure of eating a fragrant fruit is no less than eating this treat in a fresh state.
