Mango Cutting 101

Hi Tartlets!  It's Ataulfo mango season, which is my favorite kind of mango.  They are less stringy and more reliably sweet during peak season (March-July) than their Tommy Atkins (red/green) counterparts.  They also have a high flesh-to-seed ratio (seeds are small!)  I could eat them all day long, if they weren't so caloric...*sigh*.

(Eat mangoes in moderation if you're counting calories! You're looking at ~100-135 cals/fruit (without refuse). )

So - this morning I was making mango jam before work (we'll talk about jam later).  It took me many years of eating mangoes before I learned to cut them well.  My technique:

(1) Lay mango on its side.  Take a sharp knife, guess where the pit might be, and start slicing as close to the top of the pit as possible.  You might hit the pit, in which case, move you knife up a bit and try again.  The goal is to cut all along the length of the mango, as close to the pit as possible.  Flip mango, and repeat on bottom.

(2) What results is this:
The fruit with pit inside is on the top of the photo below; the bottom two are the large pit-free slices I took off the top and bottom of the mango, as I followed along the length of the pit.  Then, I sliced the flesh with the knife, creating "fingers".  I took the spoon you see and scooped out the fingers.  You can see all that is left is only the skin.  Repeat for both sides.

(3) Now try and get some bits off the portion that contains the pit.  I take my knife and first cut the skin that remains around the perimeter of the pit.  I cut very close to the skin, taking care not to lose too much mango in the process (you can use a potato/vegetable peeler if you prefer).  I only want to remove the skin.  Then, I cut around the pit on all sides and slice off mango flesh wherever I can find it.  All that should be left in the end is a pit.

Or...if you're feeling lazy, you can do what I sometimes do - just knaw at the pit and eat whatever you can get!  Then floss your teeth.

**Enjoy**