Cooking Cute: Mango Slicing Tutorial

There are many different ways to slice mango. One popular method is to slice the unpeeled mango with your knife as close to the pit as possible. You then use the tip of your knife to cut horizontal and vertical lines through the fruit until you hit the skin. When you turn the mango half 'inside-out', little squares of mango are created that are easy to cut off from the skin.

I generally like to slice mango in long even pieces for presentation purposes – e.g., it looks so pretty fanned out across a plate of mango sticky rice. Here's how I do it...

(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

	This is a lovely champagne mango – one of the sweetest varieties. You should try one if you haven't already.
	Peel your mango. I use a vegetable peeler, but you can be all hardcore and use a paring knife like my mom does. Whether you're using a knife or a peeler, make sure it's sharp. The blade should slide easily through and under the skin of the fruit. Accidents can happen when you're trying to push a dull blade into the thick skin, and you're wrestling with the slippery peeled parts.
	Slice off a small section along a skinny side of the mango so that you can 'stand' the mango up on this flat edge. This will stabilize the mango as you work.
	Place your knife lengthwise along the mango, but a little bit off-center so that you miss the pit as you slice one of the mango's 'cheeks' off. Try to get as close to the pit as possible, but don't cut into the pit itself.
	Rotate the mango and slice off it's other 'cheek'. You should now have two nice-sized hunks of mango to slice up prettily.
	Don't waste fruit! Cut the rest of the mango flesh off of the pit using a sort of 'whittling' techinique. Try to keep the pieces as large as possible as even the sweetest mango doesn't look appetizing when it's been hacked to pieces. If you do make a mess, bake a pie or make some chutney or something.
	Take your mango cheeks and slice them lengthwise or crosswise to the desired width. This is the easy part!
	Voila! Pretty mango slices. If you want to create a fan, gently pick up a section of slices and then place the whole stack, with the largest piece on the bottom on top of whatever it is you are garnishing. Gently fan the mango slices by separating the slices with a rotating motion while keeping one end stabilized. (It is much easier done than said.)