Tips For Cooking With Fruit
By:Amy Hanten
Updated:
Share this!
- Don’t store your bananas in a bowl with other fruits. They release gases that cause fruits to ripen quickly.
- To ripen fruits, wrap them in newspaper and put them in a warm place for 2-3 days. The ethylene gas they emit will make them ripe.
- To chop dry fruits, place them in the fridge for half an hour before cutting. Take the fruits out and cut them with a hot knife (dip them in hot water before cutting).
- Want to get your kids to eat more fruit? Instead of just throwing an apple or an orange in your kiddos’ lunch bag, why not WOW them and put the fruit on a stick? Just thread fruit like fresh strawberries, grapes, and pineapple chunks onto a skewer, and all of a sudden boring fruit gets a lot more fun! If you’re using apples and bananas, dip them in lemon juice or 7up, and that will prevent them from getting brown.
- Make Fruit Fun! Plain Greek yogurt mixed with a little honey and some pureed strawberries or raspberries makes a super quick, easy, healthy, and delicious dip for fruit! For the lunch box, little containers with two compartments make it easy to pack fruit and dip to go. It’s a lunch box treat that won’t get traded!
- Make Halloween a little healthier and still fun for the kiddos with my Halloween Fruit Kabobs. Use fun small-shaped cookie cutters to cut cantaloupe into shapes. Great served with my Orange Fluff Dip!
- When picking a melon, smell it for freshness and ripeness. Check to see that the fruit is heavy in weight and that the spot on the end where it has been plucked from the vine is soft.
Citrus Fruits
- For fresh flavor in orange juice, add the juice of one lemon.
- Need to peel a bunch of oranges. Just soak the oranges in boiling water for a few minutes, then peel as usual. As a bonus, the “white” part of the peel will come off along with the peel!
- For fresh-tasting lemon or lime juice year-round, freeze lemons and limes whole; thaw in the microwave before squeezing.
- If the lemon or lime is hard, put it in warm water for 5-10 minutes to make it easier to squeeze. Alternatively, you can microwave a lemon or lime for 10 to 15 seconds and get more juice!
- To get the most juice out of lemons, roll them under your palm on the counter a few times before squeezing.
- Squeeze some lemon juice on apple slices to avoid browning. They will look fresh for a longer time.
