Recently a reader, Noel ‘reminded’ me that I have been slacking off on my “Back to Basics’ section. That I sure have been! I have been baking, cooking and trying out new stuff as always and that which gives me so many avenues to explore basic techniques, methodologies, usage of terms etc – but in the heat of cooking the recipe, I often end up forgetting to take pictures for these particular aspects.  But recently I was trying out something new with grapefruit and when I was just going to segment them, I remembered my “Back to Basics’ section and thought why not..?

Today I am going to show you what the word ‘Supreme’ means when used in connotation of fruits. The act of Supreme means ” to remove the skin, pith, membranes, and seeds of a citrus fruit and separate its wedges.” You will have come across this term often enough if you watch Food Network. The chef’s use it a lot. Lets see how to Supreme a Grapefruit in this post. You can do the same for any Citrus fruits like orange etc.

Method

Trim the edge of the grapefruit – all the way to the juicy flesh.

Repeat the other side. You should be able to make it sit on the board.

You should cut it in such a way that you can see the insides of the fruit like in the picture below.

Now place the knife at an angle to the fruit and cut it down, all the way to the bottom, starting from the curve on top. You can see the depth of the skin of the fruit and place your knife on the inner edge of the skin.

The idea is to remove all the skin and the pith at the same time but making sure that its not cut too deep thereby removing the fruit too. You don’t want to lose half of the fruit just the skin and pith.

Repeat again for all the sides until the skin is completely off.

Its totally fine if some of the pith is left out. Better that than getting the fruit out. Using the same technique just remove the pith alone.

Once all the skin and pith have been removed, hold the fruit above a bowl. This is to catch the fruit juice that would flow from your fingers while you are segmenting. You don’t want to waste the juices. If you see the fruit now, you will notice there are small membranes that separate the segments.

Slice down along the membrane

Slice down the other side which surrounds the piece. Push your knife at an angle below and push it up in order to remove that segment. So what happens is the fleshy part of the segment comes out leaving the cover/membrane behind.

Repeat this on all sides making sure run the knife along the membranes. You will find that you have the membranes left over once the segments are all out.

No, don’t throw it away yet! Squeeze out these membranes or should we call it the skeletons over the bowl to release all the juices. There’s usually a lot of juice left in them.

Once squeezed dry, throw these pieces away.

Now this is what is called as Supreme. These segments can be used in salads, baked goodies or in any way you choose to enjoy!

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