I don’t think that anyone really needs a tutorial to demonstrate how to cut a piece of fruit. I wanted to create one anyway. Here are the basic tools that you will need:

  • A ripe mango (it should smell sweet)
  • A cutting board
  • A sharp knife (I prefer serrated)

1) The first step is to figure out the orientation of the seed. Mangos have giant, oblong seeds that span from the top to the bottom of the fruit. You are going to want to cut around the skinny side of the seed. It’s easy to find – orient the fruit so the thinner side is face up.

  1. To make the first cut, you want to slice downward, slightly off center to the right to make room for the seed. It’s better to risk being too close to the center, and start cutting, hit the seed, and then curve the knife slightly to go around it.

  2. Here are the two pieces directly after the first cut. The piece on the left has the seed. Matter of fact, if you look closely at the center, you will see that I just grazed it.

  1. The second cut is exactly the same, but on the other side. You want to cut off the majority of the fruit and get as close to the seed as is feasible.

  1. Here are the three pieces after the first two cuts. The piece on the far left is essentially the seed with some fruit around the edges. We will want to now hold this piece on its end, and cut around it on both sides to remove the two strips of fruit.

  1. Here we have removed the two strips, and I’m holding what is left of the seed. There is still a small amount of fruit on the seed… and here’s a fun part! You can eat that fruit right off! If you look closely, you can see teeth marks on the top of the seed :O)

  1. The last step is to make the large pieces of fruit easy to invert. If you are preparing for multiple people, you could also cut these two large pieces in strips as would be done with a melon. I like to “checkerboard-slice” right up to the skin, but being careful not to cut through the skin. This allows you to invert the fruit and have easily consumable blocks!

  1. The last step of course, is to eat and enjoy. Bon appetit!


Suggested Citation:
Sochat, Vanessa. "How to cut a mango. That's maango. Not mang-go." @vsoch (blog), 20 Jun 2010, https://vsoch.github.io/2010/how-to-cut-a-mango-thats-maango-not-mang-go/ (accessed 16 Apr 24).