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A lot of the times when i bring a pineapple home and eat it, i get a semi-sweet and sour taste. How can you tell when is the right time to eat your pineapple to get very sweet pineapple meat?

Chris Ching
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  • Related Question: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/860/what-should-i-check-when-buying-a-pineapple – talon8 Oct 30 '11 at 16:55
  • I suspect you have little to no choice about varieties, so the question linked to by talon8 is probably your best bet. If you do have some choice... as an alternative to the wordy article provided by soegaard, Wikipedia has a [more concise list of varieties](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple#Cultivars), and this Purdue page has a [much more comprehensive list](http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/pineapple.html#Varieties). Upshot: smooth cayennes are on average sweeter than red spanish, though there's considerable variation among derived strains. – Cascabel Oct 31 '11 at 13:17
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    And actually, I think this is a duplicate - selecting a ripe one at the store is essentially the same as knowing the right time to eat one. – Cascabel Oct 31 '11 at 13:21

3 Answers3

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Usually you can tell when Pineapples are ripen, which will be sweet, when

  1. Leaves are loose and can easily be picked from the top
  2. The shell has golden colour (but not dark brown, these are getting rotten)
  3. The aroma even from out of the shell is strong

A typical pineapple that is bought green and unripen, takes one to two days to ripe well. Don't put them in the fridge if you want to ripe them. Keep them out on the counter. As a street food vendor, we always keep them in the truck for one night prior to selling, that ensure the pineapples ripe enough and the juice comes out of it.

Hope it helps.

K2so
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  • Actually, the fruit need to be ripe for sweetness, but a fully ripened fruit is not always necessarily sweet (bad crop, wild ones, etc). Ripeness is far easier to gauge than sweetness. – user110084 Jun 07 '17 at 02:02
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Once a pineapple is picked. It will not ripen any further. To find a sweet pineapple, tap the pineapple with your middle finger nail. If it has a solid sound it suppose to be ripe and sweet. A hollow sound means it is still green and sour. Tap several pineapple and compare the sound.

user58389
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First of all there are different types of pineapple: The difference between pineapple types.

Second you need to know how to pick the ripe ones: How to Select the Perfect Good Pineapple from the Grocery Store.

apaderno
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soegaard
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    It's really best if answers have at least a bit of information in them, not just links. – Cascabel Oct 30 '11 at 21:04
  • There are pros and cons for this. See http://meta.cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/526/outside-link-useage for reasons to include outside links. – soegaard Oct 30 '11 at 21:19
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    I didn't say not to include them, I said that you should also include information in your answer. All that the linked meta question says is that it's okay to include links, not that it's okay for them to be your entire answer. Further, they actually discourage that: Joe says "additional related information". The key word for you is *additional*. – Cascabel Oct 30 '11 at 21:42
  • Feel free to edit the answer. – soegaard Oct 30 '11 at 21:48
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    Feel free to provide an answer with information in it, so that others (including the OP) don't have to read wordy articles hunting for the actual answer. – Cascabel Oct 31 '11 at 05:43