PROCESS

NOTES

Harvest

Mature fruit, harvested carefully. Except for hard fruits (e.g. coconuts) they should not be piled into vehicles. Use containers (Fig. 1) with loaded weight of 10 kg approx. Smaller and they will be thrown, larger and they will be dragged or dropped - both causing damage to food and container.

Sort/grade

Sort by size, colour, shape, maturity, skin defects (Table 2).

Clean

Wash in clean water. Use filters or chlorinate if necessary (one teaspoon of bleach per gallon of water), (Fig. 2).

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.

Pulp

Use a fruit press, fruit mill or pulper/sieve (Figs. 4-6). All metal in contact with fruit should be stainless steel. Some fruits are heated to increase juice yield and prevent browning. Citrus juices are extracted by a reamer or press (Fig. 7). Juice is strained manually through sieves and clear syrups/cordials produced using a fine cloth bag.