Dragon fruit, the big brother of the kiwi. With his colorful and exotic shelf is he a real beauty in the greengrocer. But how do you open it? Many people are not familiar with this exotic fruit. Routinely we get the question “How to open dragon fruit?” In this blogpost we’ll tell you how! There are two techniques you can use for opening a dragon fruit. For these techniques you will need a knife, a cutting board and a spoon.
How to open dragon fruit
The dragon fruit is rising in his popularity in the western culture. This exotic fruit has a hard shelf and a soft inside. You can eat it raw, use it in a fruit salad or add it to your smoothie. For some people it can be hard to open a dragon fruit. But don’t worry, we got all the information on how to open dragon fruits (also known as pitahaya).
There are 2 techniques you can use for opening the dragon fruit.
- cutting the dragonfruit
- peeling the skin off
Technique 1: Cutting the dragon fruit
For the first technique you’ll need a sharp knife, a spoon and a cutting board. Make sure the cutting board doesn’t move when you use it. You can do this by laying a wet kitchen towel under it.
Watch out! Working with a sharp knife can be dangerous so we don’t advise to use this technique for unsupervised children under the age of 12.
Step 1
Opening a dragon fruit is easy this way. You start with slicing the dragon fruit in two seperate pieces. You place the dragon fruit on a cutting board and use a sharp knife. Then you cut the dragon fruit lengthwise in half. Use one hand to cut and the other one so it doesn’t move from its place. Watch out for your fingers ! Cut slowly and remove your hand when the knife is far enough through the dragon fruit.
Tip: It can be hard to slice through the thick shelf of the dragon fruit. If you have problems with your arm or wrist you could better use technique nr. two.
Step 2
After you separate the dragon fruit in two pieces you start using the next kitchen tool, the spoon. Slide the spoon smoothly along the peel of the dragon fruit until the soft inside is loose from the peel. Now you can throw away the peel, you won’t need it anymore. Unless you’re going to use it to decorate a dish / the fruit.
Step 3
Now everything that is left is the inside of the dragon fruit. You can chop it into small pieces with the knife.The black seeds are edible, so you don’t have to remove them. Now it’s time to eat them! You can eat them raw, use them in a salad or add it to your smoothie.
Technique 2: Peeling the Dragon fruit
Step 1
Start with locating the top part of the Dragon Fruit. The top part is the woody stem. After you have located the top part you can start peeling here. To peel the skin, grab the pieces at the top and peel them off, the same you do with a banana. Keep peeling till you only have a white edible core.
Step 2
Now you cut the fruit into four pieces. First cut the dragon fruit in half vertically and horizontally. Then you chop each section of the fruit into smaller bite-size pieces. The pieces are now small enough to eat with a fork or to use in your salde/blender.
Is your dragon fruit ripe?
This techniques work the best when the dragon fruit is ripe. You can check this by looking at the dragon fruit. If the dragon fruit has a bright pink skin then its ready to eat. On the end of the skin you will see some green on it, but you shouldn’t see that much dark spots. If you don’t know if its ripe after watching the skin, you can touch the skin to feel if its
Grow your own dragon fruit
We believe that fruit tastes the best when you grow it by yourself. On our website we sell seeds and cuttings from different types of dragon fruit. You can also find a lot more information about the dragon fruit and the dragon fruit cuttings. Check it out! 🙂