Stand the mango on its narrow edge. Slice down on either side of the flat pit. Score the flesh in a grid without cutting through the skin. Push the skin inside out. Eat the cubes off the skin or slice them into a bowl.

That’s the hedgehog cut. It takes about 90 seconds once you learn where the pit lives.

But nobody told me where the pit lives, so for years I just hacked at mangoes with a paring knife until I had a pile of stringy mush and a pit with half the fruit still clinging to it. My cutting board looked like a mango crime scene.

Step one: Find the pit

A mango pit is flat and oblong, shaped like a flattened almond. It runs the length of the fruit. You want to cut parallel to the flat sides of the pit, not through it.

Stand the mango up on its narrow bottom edge. The stem end faces up. The pit runs from the stem down through the center. Your knife should go in about a quarter inch to the right of the stem, then slice straight down. Same on the left side.

You’ll get two “cheeks” — the rounded sides — and a middle section with the pit still in it. That middle section still has good fruit. Trim around the pit with a paring knife. Those pieces won’t be pretty but they taste the same.

The scoring trick

Take each cheek, skin side down. Use your knife to score a grid pattern into the flesh — lines about half an inch apart. Do not cut through the skin. Then press the skin side so the cubes pop outward. It looks like a porcupine. A delicious porcupine.

Now you can either eat the cubes straight off the skin, or run your knife along the inside of the skin to slice them all off at once into a bowl.

How to tell if a mango is even ready

A ripe mango gives slightly when squeezed, like a ripe avocado. It should smell sweet at the stem end. Color is not a reliable indicator — different varieties ripen to different colors, so don’t judge a mango by its blush.

If your mango is rock hard, leave it on the counter for a few days. Putting unripe mango in the fridge slows ripening to a crawl, and the texture never recovers.

The hedgehog method took me from “mangoes are too much work” to buying them weekly. The first time you flip a scored cheek inside out and see those perfect cubes, you’ll get it.