Cutting & Peeling Food

I’ve always thought that kohlrabi looks like an alien spaceship. The weirdly cylindrical shape, the skinny arms — what is this stuff? Lucky for us, kohlrabi isn’t alien at all but a delicious addition to summer salads and slaws. To consume them, there are three ways to get past this vegetable’s eccentric appearance and slice it up so you can eat it.

After dreaming about culinary school for the last five years, I finally signed up for a course this summer at the International Culinary Center in New York. The course, “Culinary Techniques,” is a three month class that meets two nights a week, and focuses on classic culinary traditions and methods like knife skills, stock-making, classic recipes, and some pastry.

Whether you’re making a fancy cocktail garnish, putting together a festive bowl of fruit salad, or serving appetizer-friendly fruit skewers, cutting your watermelon into stars adds a fun element to any summer spread. Here’s our simple method for cutting a whole watermelon down into cute little stars! Cutting watermelon into stars is easy. Once you trim the melon and cut it into slices, all you need is a star-shaped cookie cutter to stamp those stars out.

Cutting up a whole pineapple can seem like a daunting task. With prickly leaves and a tough outer skin, it’s a surprising pick for the international symbol for hospitality. Nonetheless, it’s easy to break down a whole fruit with the method I’ve laid out here! Pineapples are available year-round, but did you know that it’s peak season right now? They’re at their best from March through July, just in time for all of your favorite tropical, warm weather recipes.

Q: Whenever I’m at the grocery store in the summer months, I see people shucking corn in store and tossing aside the husks. I tend to leave the husk on for grilling or baking. Is there any benefit to shucking the corn so early? Sent by Bindi Editor: Readers, what do you think? When do you shuck your corn?

I try hard not to lug around a heavy purse or bag, opting to carry only my keys, phone, wallet, and sunglasses in a small purse. A few years ago, however, an unexpected addition made its way into my purse and has found permanent residence: plastic utensils. As a poor culinary student in Paris, my food mainly came from leftovers I brought home from class and the grocery store.

Last week I took a look at whether or not adding baking soda to the boiling water makes hard-boiled eggs easier to peel and found that, unfortunately, it didn’t seem to make a difference. So are there any tricks that do work? You had plenty of ideas in the comments and on Facebook, but the one that intrigued me most was the suggestion to use a pressure cooker.

"Perfect slices every time."

We’ve found a method to make perfect hard-boiled eggs, but how do you peel the suckers? There are a lot of different theories out there, but one that is especially intriguing involves adding a little baking soda to the cooking water. Could this small step produce pretty eggs that peeled smoothly from their shells every time? I had to test it and find out.

Sometimes I don’t need a whole avocado, especially when I’m making food for just myself, so I’m often left with a spare avocado half. As we all know, the cut surface of an avocado quickly turns brown and slimy, making it hard to store it in the refrigerator for very long. Read on for my best tip ever for keeping a cut avocado green, fresh and tasty. (And no, it does not involve the pit!

Slicing an avocado is a simple technique that requires minimal knife skills and just a few seconds of your time.

The Internet is full of so-called mind-blowing tips! Even we here at The Kitchn are not immune to the lure of the mind-blowing tip: we see them, we share them, and 95 percent of the time, we immediately forget about them. But how many of these “life-changing” tips actually work? Can they survive the leap from Pinterest board to real-life kitchen?

I used to be meticulous about peeling vegetables. Also? I used to eat a lot less vegetables and have three less children than I have today. I’ve gotten lazier about peeling, especially if the vegetables will be cooked. Besides, aren’t there nutrients in the skin of vegetables and fruits? In the end, whether or not the vegetable gets peeled depends on a few things. How do I make the decision? How many hours are there in a day? How busy am I and how long can I wait to eat?

Removing the pit from an avocado is one of those supposedly “easy” food prep tasks that we think could actually use a little explaining. How do you hold the avocado still? Do you have to use a chef’s knife? How do you keep from cutting yourself? If you’ve never done it before, all of this can definitely feel a bit scary! Well, here’s a close look at how we do it so the next time you’re faced with an avocado, you know exactly what to do.

The bounty of summer produce is over, but here in South Carolina we find a lot of greens at the farmers’ market. That’s fine by me, because collards, chard and kale are abundant and I love them. What I don’t love is slicing them. Tearing greens with my bare hands will usually suffice, but there are times when I want strips, and I’ve finally figured out the best way to get them. When I discovered pre-sliced collards, I was thrilled, but I craved chard and kale, too.

Sure, it’s a cliche. But when October rolls around, I want pumpkin. No, not the flavor of pumpkin spice, but actual pumpkin. I love pumpkin soup, pumpkin chili, even pumpkin muffins, and it seems more festive to buy a fresh one than pick up a few cans of purée. But peeling pumpkin is a pain, or it was until I learned a few tricks. Sadly, I know of no better way to remove the seeds than to just dig in to the slimy insides with my bare hands.

Slicing a lot of cherry tomatoes individually can be kinda tedious. Here is how to do it with minimal time or effort and with thing you probably already have in your kitchen. This trick has been floating around the internet for a while – and it really is a game changer. All you need for this hack is a bunch of cherry tomatoes, two plastic tops from storage containers, and a very sharp knife. 1. Place the tomatoes on the lid of one of the containers. 2.

When a local kitchen store called to see if I would be interested in trying one of their classes, I jumped at the chance. I’m a self taught cook and I have the scars and culinary tragedies in my past to prove it. Hoping to save at least one of my children from their own mistakes, I brought my 12 year old son Xander with me to the class. It was a lot of fun and we both learned how to use knives in a safer, more efficient way. By the time it was over, we were pros!

There are some tasks in the kitchen I don’t enjoy: grating cheese, shucking corn, and peeling and chopping garlic among them. The kids can take over some of those tasks, and they should, because — just like my mother told me, over and over — while they live in my house, they have to live by my rules. She also observed that when I had my own house, I could make my own rules. She was right. This totally came true! I make rules all the time! Even though they get broken.

There are very few savory recipes that don’t begin with a chopped onion or that contain minced herbs or garlic. For a new cook, terms like “medium chop” or “small dice” can be confusing. Medium compared to what? How small is small? And how much trouble can you get into if you small chop something when the recipe says to mince?

A half of a grapefruit is a pretty wonderful way to start your day. Sure it’s healthy, but even better, it’s a delicious and juicy treat that wakes you up with its puckery taste! Grapefruits do require a small amount of prep work, but it only takes a sharp knife and a short minute to free up those segments. Read on for our step-by-step instructions.You can’t just cut a grapefruit in half and dig in with a spoon. Well, you can but you will make a mess of it.

Watch the video to learn how to peel and cut a butternut squash.

We love the sweet-sour taste of pineapple just about any time, but it has particular appeal during the dog days of winter. You can buy pre-cut pineapple from the store, but it’s fresher and more economical to buy a whole one and cut it yourself. Here’s the way we do it. Pick a pineapple that has evenly shaped “eyes” on the skin. Look for ones that are mostly yellow — we’ve found that the more yellow they are, the sweeter they are.

Fresh ginger is a staple in my kitchen. It is an extremely versatile ingredient that shows up in any course, from savory to sweet, be it main, beverage, dessert, or salad. It can even be medicine — hot ginger tea with lemon, honey and brandy will cure what ails you! In short, fresh ginger is essential to my cooking. Read on for my methods for peeling and mincing fresh ginger.

If you’ve been seeding your tomatoes before using them in your cooking, we have news for you: maybe you should stop. Or so says America’s Test Kitchen host Chris Kimball in his new book on the science of cooking. So what’s wrong with seeding tomatoes?

Q: What’s the best way to slice balls of fresh mozzarella cleanly and neatly? I’m usually able to get a few clean slices with a knife, but then the soft cheese start squishing. Any advice?Sent by JenniferEditor: Ah! A perennial problem! I usually muddle through by holding the sides of the mozzarella as I slice to try and keep everything compact.

Fava bean season is long over in my area, but I’m looking ahead to next spring and filing away this tip for easier fava bean peeling from food scientist Harold McGee. He recently stumbled onto a trick that accomplishes the laborious task of peeling off fava skins in half the time — all you need is one common kitchen staple.

It’s summer. It’s hot. We think this is a good time to discover some new kitchen shortcuts. When I first learned about grating garlic, it blew my mind – I didn’t know you could do that! No mess, finer consistency than chopping – genius. And now, here are 10 more foods you didn’t know you could grate!Some of these will work best with a box grater, some with a mini Microplane.

Q: I have a new Kenmore blender/food processor combo. I love it for chopping vegetables, but I just cannot get the hang of using it to grate cheese. All I get is a bunch of tiny “chunks” that are going to be very hard to get off my blades and the bowl. Please help!Sent by LindaEditor: My food processor has a special blade for grating cheese, called a “shredding disk.” If your food processor didn’t come with one of these blades, you may want to look into getting one.

We love the warm, peppery-sweet flavor of fresh ginger in all kinds of dishes. In the past we’ve talked about grating ginger with a ceramic grater or a Microplane, but what if you don’t have either tool on hand? Just grab a fork.To grate ginger with a fork, hold the fork down on a work surface and rub a peeled knob of ginger across the tines. That’s it!Even if you use a real grater at home, this trick can come in handy if you’re cooking in a kitchen without one.

Q: I was shopping for cutting boards recently and saw a wood board that was heat safe to 350°F. Could such boards be used as trivets? Thank you!Sent by LeeEditor: Yes, it sounds like heat-safe cutting boards would be fine to use as a trivet. Let dishes cooked higher than 350°F cool a little first, but everything else should be fine to place on the cutting board without fear of leaving charred marks.Readers, do any of you have experience with cutting boards like this?Next question?

Q: I’m trying to find a large (approx 25″ x 20″) butcher block/cutting board for the countertop of my new apartment. But I haven’t seen many close to that size and the ones I have seen are WAY out of my price range.Since the expense of moving has tapped me out for a while, I’m hoping to keep the purchase under $75. Have any suggestions on where I should be looking? Is my budget even reasonable?

Watch the video to learn how to cut a mango.

Q: How do you peel beets? I used to roast beets and found it fairly easy to rub off the skins. I usually microwave them now and sometimes the skins rub off easily, but most of time I have to peel them with a knife. How long do you have to cool them under a cold water rinse? It seems like the longer they cool, the easier it is to slip the skin off. It just doesn’t make sense to me.I love beets but don’t make them often enough to keep the process straight. Any suggestions?

Q: My boyfriend recently mixed a bag of steel cut oats with quinoa and I’m not sure how I should go about cooking it or what to make!I really don’t want to waste the whole thing by dumping it out, so any suggestions or recipes to fix my situation?Sent by LilyEditor: Lily, it seems like steel cut oats and quinoa would cook well together.

The first time I took my paring knives to a knife sharpener, I felt almost embarrassed. These are cheap-o little things with plastic handles and stamped-metal blades. It seemed silly to hand them over for professional sharpening along with my big chef’s knife.I’d wager that paring knives are the real workhorse of many kitchens. I know my three spend more time in the dish drainer after being cleaned than they do in the drawer with the other knives.

This square of rubber may not look like much, but in the last few weeks, it has quickly become one of my new favorite kitchen tools. It has single-handedly transformed the task of peeling persnickety cloves of garlic from annoying to easy-breezy.This garlic peeler is genius in its very simplicity. Bundle the cloves inside the rubber mat and roll it back and forth against the counter a few times while pressing down on the cloves.

If you’ve ever whacked a cut open pomegranate with a wooden spoon or fumbled around with it under water, then you know extracting those lovely seeds (also called arils) is a messy endeavor. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Read on for my favorite way to extract the arils from a pomegranate! Pomegranates are a beautiful fall-to-winter fruit, delicious and full of antioxidants, too.

Q: I was asked to make lemon bars for an upcoming art event in my community. I love to make lemon bars but I hate slicing them.Is there a way to get pretty little squares instead of mangled, messed up edges? I want them to look good this time!Sent by KerriEditor: Great question, Kerri. I often have trouble cutting up any sort of cookie bar, not just lemon bars. I have found that a hot, wet, very sharp knife helps quite a bit. Also, make sure the bars are completely chilled before cutting.

Q: I got out our old Cuisinart blender yesterday when my fiance said she wanted a strawberry smoothie. I put in milk and yogurt and some whole frozen strawberries. As soon as I turned it on, an air pocket formed around the blade and nothing was blending.Do you think I need a different blender, or do I maybe need to buy sliced frozen strawberries? Or fresh strawberries? The blender has no problem with ice.

Love garlic? Skip the mince.Mincing is great for infusing an entire dish with garlicky goodness without actually overwhelming the other flavors. But sometimes? Well, we want a hit of the real stuff.That’s when you should think about ignoring what the recipe says and leaving your garlic in big healthy slices. Do you ever do this?When you leave the garlic in slices rather than mincing it down to a pulp, you still get a garlic-infused dish. But you also get the occasional bite of pure garlic.

Ever been to a crawfish boil? It’s a full-contact eating affair, so bring your appetite and your bib. On our New Orleans seafood tour, Chichi Wang from Serious Eats showed me a super-easy way to crack, peel, and suck those crawfish so you’re sure to get every last succulent bite.Chichi confidently cracks the head off a crawfish.Chichi saw me struggling to peel each bit of shell from my crawfish (I was on my first; she was on her fifth), and explained this easy five-step technique:1.

As round as an egg and too slippery to grasp, avocado pits are persnickety little devils. Have you found a reliable way to remove the pits from avocados? The most reliable way that we’ve found is to first slice the avocado in half lengthwise and then firmly strike the pit with the heel of a chef’s knife. The knife lodges a few millimeters into the pit, so we can gently twist the pit to dislodge it and then lift it out.

Q: I have been baking bread for my wife and I to use for lunch every day. While the bread is pretty darned good (if I do say so myself), I’ve run into a bit of a technical problem: slicing it. I am using a serrated bread knife, and while it does get the job done, I find that the slices are thicker than I’d like; otherwise, I wind up with misshapen or smooshed slices. I am getting about 13 slices (plus end pieces) per loaf from a standard-sized bread pan.

I found this strange tool in a kitchen shop during a recent trip to Germany. Although it’s a very specific tool (please let me know if you can ever figure out a second use for it!), I use it every time I make soft boiled eggs. I think I even make them more often just so I can use this tool!When I lived in France for a semester in college, I noticed all sorts of charming kitchen details.

Q: This is a question my Dad asked me and I didn’t know a good answer so I will turn it over to The Kitchn community for help. My dad regularly makes apple sauce and he uses an apple corer and peeler for a lot of apples. He is left with tons and tons of apple skin strings (we call it apple spaghetti).Are there any good uses for the skin? In particular, are there any healthy uses?Sent by JustinEditor: Justin, why yes! There are many uses for leftover apple peels.

As I mentioned back in December, my favorite kitchen tool is my nakiri-bocho, a handmade Japanese vegetable knife I bought at a knife and sword festival in Central Japan. Although it can be a pain to keep sharp and rust-free, when it comes to chopping vegetables, this knife beats my traditional chef’s knife every time.High-quality Japanese kitchen knives are forged from the same materials and handmade using the same process as Japanese swords.

Onions are one of our favorite vegetables to eat…and least favorite to prep. Their papery, flaky skin just seems to get everywhere. The same goes for garlic, for that matter! We’ve figured out a few strategies over the years for dealing with it, but we’d love to hear yours.When it comes to peeling onions and garlic, we actually take a page from Rachael Ray’s book and use a Garbage Bowl (nothing fancy – just a spare mixing bowl).

As we dive into some fresh tutorials and videos for How To Month we’d like to first direct your attention to a few tutorials from our archives. These 10 tutorials are all on everyone’s most-requested topic: Knife skills!There are some basics here; we especially recommend the video on basic knife skills, which covers how to set up your cutting board, and how to hold your knife. Also, The Claw! makes an appearance.

We eat a lot of avocados in our house. And if we’re making guacamole or avocado toast, the means by which we remove the flesh from the shell matters very little. But if we want clean, uniform chunks, this is our go-to method. It’s so much easier than “make a grid pattern and then pop out the pieces” (which never worked for us anyway).

Have you ever tried roasting and peeling your own chestnuts? Well, an unfortunate experience with a batch of chestnut stuffing a few years back taught us that it’s a Royal Pain. That said, we just heard this clever chestnut-peeling tip from Melissa Clark that might make it worth giving it another go.Melissa Clark’s family makes chestnut stuffing every year for Thanksgiving. (Unlike me, apparently they didn’t give up after the first time!

Do you know this tip? To stop stinging eyes and tears when cutting onions, put a piece of bread in your mouth and let it hang out while chopping. Have you tried this, and does it work for you?I had never heard this tip until I took that cooking class in Paris in the fall. One of the participants mentioned it, and so of course I had to try it as soon as I was in my kitchen at home.Now, usually I wear contact lenses and have no trouble with crying or stinging while cutting onions.

a microplaneI’m right handed, so I hold the microplane in my left hand and the lemon in my right. Brush the lemon over the microplane from the top of the lemon to the bottom. Use a gentle rocking motion, taking off just the top layer of skin. Rotate the lemon between each stroke so you get new surface area every time until you’ve gone all the way around the lemon.The other way is to use a traditional zester, as in the picture above.

Q: I’ve just perfected a homemade bread recipe and I’m very pleased with the results. Sadly, I cannot say the same for my slicing abilites. Is there an easy, do-it-yourself way to make a bread slicing guide or something that would help make my slices nice and even? I’ve tried using a sharp, large bread knife and an electric knife and I still end up with oddly shaped slices, and our local second-hand store didn’t have any old guides in stock. Thanks!

We love naked fruit around here. We’ve discussed naked lemons at length, and now we’re talking naked peaches. Oh, the indecency. But this method of skinning peaches from Smitten Kitchen is too easy. You’ll get to the cobbler (or the crumble) with less work.We’re a little embarrassed that we’ve never done this with peaches. We’re always pitting, slicing, peeling. Pitting, slicing, peeling.

Let’s face it: trimming green beans is a chore. Laboriously snipping the tops and tails off of each bean with a paring knife definitely gets old after a while. Particularly when you’ve still got most of the pile left to go. Here’s what we do to make the job go by a little more quickly.You can use a chef’s knife or a paring knife for this, whichever you feel more comfortable using.

Yesterday we shared some ideas for marinated goat cheese. Here’s a little trick we use for these recipes or any time we want nice, clean rounds of soft goat cheese. Hint: check your medicine cabinet!Slicing through soft, creamy goat cheese can get rather messy. Sometimes this doesn’t matter, but when your presentation requires a clean cut, all you need is a piece of dental floss. Wrap the floss around your fingers, hold it taught, and pull it downward through the cheese. Ta-da!

I am a major steel-cut oatmeal fan. A bowl of it keeps me happy all morning long, with its chewy texture, creamy consistency, and nutty flavor. You might think that it can’t get much better than a splash of milk and spoonful of brown sugar over top, but here’s something else you have to try: toasted steel-cut oats. Toasted oats aren’t some fancy new product for your shopping list — it’s something that you can do yourself!

Bell peppers are one of our all-time favorite vegetables. They can be hollowed out and filled with rice stuffing. They can be cut into strips and dipped in dressing for a quick afternoon snack. Or they can be diced and used in any stir-fry, frittata, or pasta sauce. This method works well for prepping any bell pepper for any dish you want, but it’s certainly not the only way! How do you slice your peppers?

Given that the vast majority of dinners start with a pile of thinly-sliced onions on the cutting board, we here at The Kitchn feel it’s worth taking the time to make sure your onion skills are on point. Confidence is everything when it comes to dinner, am I right? Grab your favorite chefs knife and your onion goggles — I’m about to show you how to cut your onion like a kitchen ninja. Recipes are annoyingly inconsistent when it comes to sliced onions.

Peeling the skins off of roasted peppers can be a chore. One is often left picking off small bits of skin at a time, which is tedious, or peeling away chunks of pepper flesh along with the skin! Here’s an easy method that guarantees you will peel your peppers faster and not lose any tasty pepper flesh. This method can be used with any peppers; bell or chiles.

We’re always interested in learning How To Peel Things, and when Kitchn reader Niamh recently asked about celery root, we were inspired to try a few different techniques. Knobby and often hairy, celery root (also known as celeriac) may seem daunting to peel but it’s actually quite simple. Here’s the best technique we found.Celery root’s skin is too tough and bumpy to peel with a vegetable peeler.

We love cooking with shallots. Their sweet, mild flavor is a great asset in many dishes, especially uncooked salads and slaws that need some onion. But we really don’t enjoy peeling shallots. They’re trickier even than garlic; their papery skins are stubborn and sticky, and often wind around multiple cloves deep into the shallot itself.Here’s one way to make peeling shallots a little easier.

Over the weekend, I purchased a durian, which is a tropical fruit that originates in Southeast Asia, in Chinatown in San Francisco with my friend Prisna. Durians have received mixed reviews across the board. They are considered either a delicacy or a nuisance; some say their scent is fragrant, while others have a far different opinion. The durian fruit.

Ginger is one of those herbs that we love all year round, but especially in February when it brightens up so many winter dishes with its fresh, spicy flavor. Right now we’re putting ginger in everything from stir-fries and sauces to cookies and cocktails, because it seems to bring a bit of Spring into the kitchen, just when we need it most.But how do you peel it so you don’t lose any of its aromatic goodness? Well, believe it or not, with a spoon.

There are a million and one tips out there for how to make a hard-boiled egg easier to peel, but far fewer on why eggs are so hard to peel in the first place. Let’s take a look, shall we?One of the most frequently quoted peeling tips is that old eggs are easier to peel than fresh ones. It turns out this particular tip has some truth!Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking explains that the white albumen in a fresh eggs has a low relatively low (ie, acidic) pH level.

One of our New Year’s resolutions is to find more ways to use kitchen scraps, and with all the Cara Cara oranges, Kishu mandarins, and other citrus fruits we’ve been eating, we now have plenty of dried peels saved. Here are some of the ways we use them. Let us know if you have any tips, too.Last winter, we made a list of 5 Good Uses for Your Citrus Peels, which included both fresh and dried peels.

A couple we know recently asked us to settle a debate. He always peeled carrots before cooking; she thought it was wasteful and unnecessary. We told them what we do, but we’re also curious to hear from our readers. Do you peel your carrots? What about other fruits and vegetables, like cucumbers, eggplants, and squash?We like to eat any peels that are clean, tender, and tasty enough, believing that they contain good nutrients and fiber.

To me, few things signal the arrival of autumn better than the sweet chestnut. As soon as I see them at the farmer’s market, I happily scoop them up, filling a bag with them. Chestnuts have to be cooked before they can be eaten. The meats are large and sweet, and do well on their own as a snack, chopped and added to savory stuffings, or added to desserts. Peeling and roasting them is a bit time-consuming, but knowing a few tricks can help expedite the process.

Let’s talk about fresh herbs. They smell great, they make our food taste incredible, and they are a pain in the you-know-what to get off the stem. If you try to tell me you actually enjoy picking off each tiny leaf, methodically working your way to a full tablespoon, I’m going to call shenanigans. Yes, fresh herbs make us work for our reward — no way around it. At the very least, we should be sure we’re stripping and mincing our herbs in the most efficient way possible.

Cauliflower was one of the first vegetables we actually liked as kids, and we’re still eating them today! Despite their rather impenetrable-seeming appearance, cauliflowers are actually pretty easy to break down into bite-sized florets. Here’s how we do it:First of all, we usually wash cauliflower after cutting it. There are so many nooks and crannies that we think it’s easier to get any grit washed out once it’s broken into pieces.

When regarding the legitimacy of Food content on TV one question is paramount: where is the line between entertainment and enlightenment? Naturally, any delineation is completely subjective, as much for the program as for its particular viewer. Yet everyone seems to have an opinion as to which TV chefs are worth their salt and which should be chopped up as a garnish.Each individual consumer must make up his or her own mind as to the essence of a program and how much they want to extract.