5 Simple Methods to Determine If Your Pineapple Is Ripe Inside

It’s easy to understand why many of us go bananas for pineapple. It’s a bright, refreshing treat that’s both acidic and tart, yet sweet and always juicy. It’s also one of the most versatile fruits. Pineapple salsa upgrades tacos, chips, and seafood dishes. Even if you don’t like it as a topping, pineapple enhances pizza when used in its dough, and the fruit is a great meat tenderizer. There’s just one challenge to enjoying pineapple: How do you actually know when it’s ripe? Underripe pineapple won’t be sweet or juicy, and overripe pineapple is on its way to spoiling. But this fruit is famous for the hard, spiky shell that you can’t simply crack into at the supermarket. Even cutting into it prematurely at home could compromise your pineapple.

Luckily, there are in fact five different ways to test pineapple ripeness. You can tell by color, weight, fronds, feel, and smell. Pineapples won’t ripen much more once picked. If you do end up with an underripe pineapple at home, you can try storing it upside down so the sugars at its bottom evenly distribute. Alternatively, you could keep it with other fruits that give off ethylene, the gas that catalyzes ripening. But before storing, it’s of foremost importance that you learn how to pick a sweet, ripe pineapple the first time.

The amount of yellow spreading across the pineapple’s exterior acts as a ripeness measuring stick. The more yellow it is, the riper the fruit is. If the shell is totally green, it’s not ripe at all. If it’s getting lighter — say, a yellowish green — it’s closer, but likely still underripe. You want to see patches of bright, lemony yellow and even light brownish yellow toward the base of the pineapple, ideally covering more of the shell than not.

However, if every inch of the shell is yellow (and doubly so if that yellow is getting deeper into orange territory), the pineapple has unfortunately already gone too far. By the time it reaches a brown or gray color, it’s definitely rotten. Typically, a ripe pineapple only lasts about three days at room temperature, with another few days of peak condition if wrapped in plastic and kept in the refrigerator.

If you see a completely golden pineapple at the market, it won’t be long before it starts to spoil, which means pineapple with an unpleasantly mushy texture, sour aroma, and poor taste. Should you have a pineapple that’s on the cusp of going from very ripe to too ripe, maybe don’t eat it by itself. However, before it goes bad, you can still blend it into a smoothie or use it in cooking and baking, like a pineapple shrimp stir fry or pineapple upside-down cake.

After eyeing a pineapple’s color, pick it up to apply some touchable tests. While feeling the weight of the fruit in your hands, you want it to be on the heavier side. If you are a little surprised by how hefty it is for its size, you’ve likely found a nice, ripe pineapple. This is because of what’s happening in fruit as it ripens. In order to go through that change, the fruit absorbs moisture and minerals — this occurs before it’s picked — and then its storage cells steadily continue to fill with those minerals, vitamins, acids, starches, sugars, and water. As the fruit ripens, the sugar content builds.

Keep in mind that the average pineapple weighs about one to two pounds, so that’s your reference point. If the pineapple feels lighter, it’s likely underripe; if it feels even heavier, it may be overripe — you can check the weight against the shell’s color to determine this for sure. It also helps to know that different kinds of pineapple can vary in certain characteristics, including weight. Smooth Cayenne is the variety you’re most likely to see at your local grocery store, as it accounts for more than 70% of the pineapples grown worldwide. While the Smooth Cayenne can weigh up to 5 or 6 pounds, Red Spanish pineapples weigh about 2 to 4 pounds.

Next, you can check the fronds of a pineapple — you know, that rich burst of pointy green leaves that perfects the fruit’s signature look? These leaves should appear nice and green, signaling a healthy, ripe pineapple, but if the fruit is indeed ripe, these fronds should also be a bit loose. If you give one a gentle pull and it comes off pretty easily, that’s a reliable sign of ripeness.

Note that they shouldn’t be falling off almost on their own, which could convey over-ripeness, as could a brownish coloring or any signs of wilting. Additionally, your tug shouldn’t be too aggressive either. This is because when the pineapple is still unripe, these leaves are firmly rooted inside. As it ripens and water and sugar circulate, the fruit expands, and things loosen up a bit.

Pineapples tend to have about 30 to 40 fronds, so don’t worry about sacrificing one for this test. Also, whatever you pull doesn’t have to go to waste. Pineapple fronds make lovely cocktail and smoothie garnishes, especially for tropical drinks. They smell great too, so they can be repurposed as pineapple-scented air fresheners once dried. You can even peel off the outside layer of leaves and use the rough, stringy inside as a scrubber for tough spots on cookware. Plus, they naturally lend themselves to island-inspired crafts like wreaths and centerpieces.

When you are weighing the pineapple and checking its fronds, it can be helpful to give it a squeeze. What you feel when you do this is a dependable indicator of ripeness. A perfectly ripe pineapple is still nice and firm but has a little bit of give to it — as in, you can literally squeeze it (but not too much). If there’s no give and the fruit is rock hard, it’s underripe. If it has so much give that it’s nearly downright squishy, it’s overripe.

As fruit ripens and ages day by day, enzymes break down the walls of its cells, releasing the cells’ sugars throughout the fruit. This is also why ripe fruit tastes sweeter. When these cell walls degrade, it impacts the texture of the fruit, which will continuously get a little bit softer as this process carries on. So, if you get that touch of give, you know sugars have started making their way around the pineapple — it should be ripe, juicy, and sweet.

If it’s fully soft, there’s a good chance that pineapple is closer to spoiling than to being enjoyably ripe. If it’s somewhere in the middle — a little too soft but not so soft it’s rotten — this is again a stage where the pineapple might be best suited to blended beverages, cooking, and baking. Oh, and if the shell feels slimy, mark and avoid.

Finally, if you’re considering purchasing a pineapple, make sure to give it a good sniff before deciding. What you find can reveal a lot about what’s going on under that shell. Ripe pineapples will offer a sweet, fruity smell that’s pleasant. Basically, it will smell exactly the way you want a perfect pineapple to smell, making you excited to take a bite.

If you can’t get any aroma at all, that’s a good sign the fruit isn’t ripe. Again, this means that those sugars haven’t broken out of their cells and sweetened the flesh of the fruit. Of course, if the pineapple is overripe and venturing into rotten territory, you will get a whiff of a more acidic, funky, sour scent. As bacteria starts to ferment the fruit’s sugars, it turns that sweetness into a vinegary quality.

If you’ve picked the ideal, perfectly ripe pineapple and are worried about enjoying it in that condition before it starts to go bad, make sure to store it well. You can chop it up and place the pieces into an airtight container in the refrigerator for a few days before moving them into the freezer. There, they should last an entire year.