PROCESS

NOTES

Harvest

Mature, but not over-ripe fruit, harvested carefully and transported in containers (Fig. 1) with loaded weight of 10 kg approx. to prevent bruising.

Sort/grade

Sort by size, shape, maturity (Table 2).

Clean

Wash in clean water.

Peel

By hand or by small scale equipment (Fig. 3). Wear gloves if manual peeling as acids (and in pineapple an enzyme) can damage skin. Use stainless steel knives and easily cleaned plastic or wooden cutting surfaces.

Slice/destone

By hand or small machine to remove stone or seeds and cut into slices, halves etc.

Fill/Mix ¬ Hot sugar syrup
Fill/Mix ¬ Jars

Place fruit in container and add 50% sugar syrup heated to 90° C. Jars and lids sterilised by boiling in water for minimum of 10 mins. Hot fill while bottles are hot to prevent breakage.

Seal ¬ lids

Small lid sealers available (Fig. 11).

Pasteurise

Heat filled bottles in boiling water for 10-20 min., depending on the type of fruit used and the size of the bottle.

Cool

Cool in air or more rapidly in a bottle cooler (Fig. 8).