Cutting & Peeling Food

Cutting boards are arguably one of the most important tools in your kitchen — it’s near impossible to cook without one, which means it’s equally important to be well-informed about them. From how many to own, to what material to buy, to how to care for one, here are five useful things to know about cutting boards. Buy the largest cutting board your kitchen counter can fit — yes, really.

You don’t need any fancy grips or gadgets to keep your cutting board in place while you work — you just need some good old-fashioned ingenuity. This little trick, which is common practice among professional chefs, will save that board from sliding all over the counter while you dice and chop. It’s of utmost importance to keep your board from slipping while cutting; it’s knife safety 101.

Picking out a cutting board can feel like a daunting task these days, between all of the shapes, sizes, and materials available. What’s plain to see, though, with a quick browse on Amazon or a stroll through your kitchen supply store, is the amount of bamboo boards on the market. While they look attractive and come with a reasonable price tag, what’s actually the deal with bamboo cutting boards? Here are five basic things to know in order to decide if this material is best for you.

You finally took the plunge and invested in a good knife — or maybe a few good knives. Either way, you’ve spent good money and your blades deserve a storage place that will keep their edges pristine for as long as possible. Here’s what not to do, and three ways to do it right. Tossing your knives in a drawer along with other kitchen gadgets and cutlery is a lousy idea.

Cutout brownies are one of my favorite party tricks — they take way less time to bake and decorate than cutout cookies and they might be tastier, too. You can easily find ghost cookie cutters in most grocery stores, at big-box retailers, and online this time of year. For these cute cutouts you’ll just need a batch of brownies and a bit of vanilla frosting. Before you can cut brownies into these cute Halloween treats, you’ll need to bake up a pan.

Peeling firm winter squash (I’m looking at you, butternut) can go one of two ways: It can be so seamless and easy that you never give it a second thought, or you regard it as one of the most frustrating tasks of the season. As for which camp you’re in, I’d argue it all depends on the tool you use for peeling. As you welcome winter squash season to your kitchen, this is the tool you’ll want to keep by your side.

I love the pop of sweet, tart juice you get from biting into a handful of pomegranate seeds, but I rarely get the pleasure since de-seeding the red orbs can be a bit of a chore. Luckily, there are a handful of tips and tricks to accomplish it with ease. I’ve tried almost all of them, but I’ve found this one to be the best. First, you’ll want to cut a 1/4-inch off the top stem so the fruit stands flat.

Having a visual image of various cuts and ingredients will help you to become a more agile and intuitive cook.

Here's everything you need to know about preparing sweet potatoes.

Come fall, there is nothing I look forward to more than working winter squash — butternut, spaghetti, kabocha, acorn — into my meal plan. What I don’t look forward to, however, is cutting into these hard, roly-poly veggies. I used to dread it every single time, until I learned a few helpful tips that make it easier (and not so scary!). Leave your small knives where they are.

Wanna give some holiday presents that will delight and impress your friends and family? Want to make sure those presents look like they cost you a small fortune, but in reality actually helped you come in under budget? Of course you do! We all do! That’s why we got so excited when we stumbled upon this little California-based shop on Etsy.

A while ago Maria Ribas said, “Cookbooks exist to help us cook,” and that statement really got me thinking. Of course there are the recipes, but there’s so much more to take away from our cookbook collections. The best tidbits to be found in cookbooks (both new and old) that truly make us better home cooks are the tips and sometimes-unexpected cooking methods that take us out of our comfort zone and usual habits in the kitchen.

The shelves at Sam’s Club started looking a little different around this time last year. See, that’s when execs decided to rethink their private-label products. “At one point, we had 21 private labels,” says Chandra Holt, vice president of private brands at Sam’s Club, in a press release. “So the first thing I set out to do was to simplify for our members. We now have one private brand: Member’s Mark.

So far this year, I’ve been cooking with more winter squash than I ever have before. (Honestly, I blame two small kids who love orange vegetables and will happily gobble up squashes of every kind roasted, puréed, or folded into soup.) Frozen butternut squash has always been a staple in our house, but whole squashes are cheaper per pound right now and have the added benefit of giving us their seeds for snacking.

One of the most hotly debated techniques in all of cooking is the easiest, best way to peel a hard-boiled egg. There are a lot of tips I’ve encountered over the years, including adding baking soda to the boiling water, blowing the egg out of its shell, and making sure the eggs are cold before peeling. But then I came across a new method in a recent video on Epicurious and I had to try it out.

It’s that time of year when we’re swimming in zucchini, and no matter what we make, it feels like we just can’t use it up fast enough. When it comes to prepping this summer veggie, I tend to default to coins, half-moons, and perhaps zucchini spears. But there is a better way to cut zucchini, and it’s a total game-changer. Forget slicing zucchini into round coins and half-moons, and skip the spears and batons — roll cutting is the better way to prep zucchini!

No matter how crafty you are, the dead of winter is the best time to hunker down with some hot chocolate or wine and make something. And with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we rounded up some of the easiest and cutest projects on Pinterest. Whether you’re celebrating many years with a significant other, turning the celebration into Galentine’s Day with your girlfriends, or hanging with the kids, there are tons of fun ways to spread the love.

Yes, yes I know. We’ve talked at length about garlic hacks. We all love the taste and despise the prep work. We’ve talked before about how to peel garlic with the help of the microwave, a cocktail shaker (bonus cardio workout), or a few bowls. In addition, we’ve also chatted about peeling individual cloves with your bare hands (hulk smash) and with the side of your knife (old school — no hacks involved).

A few years ago I learned a disturbing fact about bagels: In 2008, 1,979 people went to the emergency room due to a BRI (bagel-related injury), according to the Wall Street Journal. Apparently chicken-related injuries were more common (with 3,463 visits), but this stat still really messed with my head. All those people had their mornings ruined because they lost the battle against their everything bagel. Maybe make everything bagel bread instead?

Every Sunday I make a batch of hard-boiled eggs and stash them in the fridge to turn into quick breakfasts, lunches, and snacks throughout the week. Cooking the eggs is no problem, but peeling them can be a tedious chore. Over the years, I found that three factors make an egg easier to peel: the age of the eggs, the cooking method, and the cooling method. Here are my steps for easier-to-peel hard-boiled eggs. “What do my egg choices have to do with easy-to-peel hard-boiled eggs?

Trying to get the most juice out of limes can be tough. We have a whole bunch of tricks on the site for how to get the job done, including rolling limes and putting them in the microwave. I thought I had seen it all until a post popped up on Reddit, which includes an image that indicates we should be cutting our limes in a different way to get the most juice. Have you tried this? Does it actually make a difference? I needed to find out.

This is what a julienne cut looks like and how it's frequently used in recipes.

Of all the disastrous kitchen scenarios you can face when you show up at a rental cabin or beach house, dull or flimsy knives might be the most painful. So what do you do if the kitchen you’ll be cooking in for the next several days or weeks has crappy knives? Here are a few solutions, depending on how you’re getting to your rental and how long you’re staying.

Sometimes corn cobs need to be halved, whether for a recipe or simply smaller serving sizes, but you can leave that big knife where it is — there’s a better way to split those ears. Instead of using a knife, make this a hands-on task and break the cobs in two. If you’re working with uncooked ears of corn, be sure to shuck the corn to remove the husk and silks first; it’ll make this a much easier job.

Not all greens are created equal. Some, like spinach, arugula, and chard, are tender and delicate, ready to be eaten as is. Others, like kale and collards, come bearing a tough and fibrous center rib that’s best removed before eating. There are three easy ways to tackle this task; ready to see which one is right for you? If you’re all about keeping things simple and fast, and don’t mind if there are a few stragglers left behind, then this is the approach for you.

Every time I go to cut a winter squash, I find myself holding my breath. Because no matter how sharp my knife is, cutting through its thick skin and dense flesh is never an easy task. So if there’s a way to not risk slicing my fingers off every time I want to cook up a winter squash, be it butternut, acorn, spaghetti, or kabocha, then sign me up. That’s why I immediately had to try this tip for making cutting easier.

When you’re late getting home from work and you’re already starving for dinner, peeling your vegetables before cooking them probably feels like the last thing you want to be doing. It tacks on a few extra minutes, which on crazed weeknights can feel all too precious. So is it really necessary? Nope! If you wash your vegetables well, organic or not, it’s OK to leave the peel on.

I inherited my love of avocados from my mom. When I was in high school, she showed me how to prepare one for guacamole: carefully whacking the pit with a hefty blade, twisting to remove, and then cutting a grid pattern into the flesh before scooping with a large spoon. From there: mash, mash, mash. The task never bothered me — avocados are so delicious that the semi-annoying way that they exist is just kind of … well, fine, I guess.

Winter squash are the heroes of cold-weather cooking. Rich in vitamins and fiber, they bring a touch of sweetness to heavy dishes and enliven our plates with their bright, often deeply hued flesh. Long-lasting and beautiful, they can even double as a sculptural centerpiece until you’re ready to bring them to the chopping board.

Who: Tucker Pecan Company What: Southern Pecans Where: Montgomery, Alabama Got a pecan tree in your yard? Well, today you’re in luck: David Little, president of Tucker Pecan Company, is sharing a few gathering and shelling tips. In the fall, when the green outer hull enclosing each nut opens, the pecans are ready for harvest. At commercial pecan orchards, machines are used to shake them out of the trees.

Q: I have been cooking since I was a teenager, but I have not mastered the proper way to cut tomatoes and chicken. Every time I try to cut either one of these, the slices are uneven and I end up making a mess. Do you have any suggestions on how to cut these ingredients successfully without smashing the tomatoes or messing up the chicken? Thank you! Sent by Maia Editor: For cooked chicken, I like to let the chicken cool off a bit, as it’s easier to cut up when it’s firmed up a bit.

I love always having fresh ginger around to add a spicy kick to sweets or depth to savory foods, but I don’t always use it up. Another thing that annoys me is when I grate ginger, there are usually lots of stringy bits that don’t break up in the grater, and I’m left with weird pulpy bits. Here’s a trick that solves both problems!

Put away your pizza wheel. Don’t even think about using that giant chef’s knife. There’s another kitchen tool that’s faster and better for cutting a pizza: your kitchen shears! Scissors to cut pizza? Not a classic pizza wheel? Does this sound a little surprising or untraditional? I’ll admit that I was even skeptical before trying this for myself. But yes, kitchen shears are the simplest way to cut pizza.

There aren’t many single-function kitchen tools that I can get behind. Do we really need a jalapeño corer and an avocado cuber? I’ll admit I do love a strawberry huller and a citrus squeezer, but generally these types of products are fun at first use, then end up collecting dust and making clutter in my kitchen. My knives or my hands alone end up doing all the work.

The words dentist and knives together in the same sentence don’t sound very pleasant, do they? Don’t worry, they have nothing to do with any painful dental work, but instead are a good way to think about knife honing and sharpening! We have talked about how a honing steel doesn’t actually sharpen knives, but actually just realigns the edge of the knife back to the center. One extremely wise comment came in from our reader: This analogy is absolutely perfect.

Q: Can we talk about the best wooden cutting boards for carving cooked meat? Mine was ancient and had developed a split, so I chucked it — there was no way I could carve a chicken or other cooked meat on it without juices leaking all over my counters. I need to replace it, but am not sure how much I should spend for the best quality. I would like one with grooved edges to collect runaway juices, ideally. Thanks Kitchn editors and readers!

Unless you’re a butcher, getting really thin slices of meat, particularly uncooked meat, is a tough feat. It sounds simple enough, but even with a sharp knife, cutting a clean, totally even, thin piece of meat is challenging. The more likely scenario is that you hack back and forth through a soft piece of uncooked beef, chicken, or pork, and end up with jagged slices that are thin on one side and thick on the other. Let’s put an end to that, shall we?

Let’s face it: A crudité platter is really just an excuse to eat dip. As virtuous as I feel eating raw vegetables, the large amount of dip I try to get onto each bite probably negates any of the vegetables’ health benefits. Since carrots are such a staple on a vegetable platter, I’m here to tell you why you should ditch the carrot sticks forever and cut them into rounds instead! To put it simply, carrot rounds maximize your dipping potential.

As much as I love eating stuffing or dressing on Thanksgiving, I find the whole process of cutting up a big loaf of bread for it quite tedious, especially when there are so many other cooking tasks vying for my time and attention. Here’s a way I’ve found that helps speed up the process a bit! I used to cut up the loaf of bread crosswise into slices like you would for sandwiches, then cut each of the slices into little cubes.

The most ideal carving situation for a Thanksgiving turkey (or any large piece of meat) is a big cutting board with wells or grooves to catch the juices that leak out when you’re carving. But you may not be able to justify the space for an oversized board like this if you only use it once or twice a year for holidays. Here’s a quick hack to make your everyday cutting board into a better setup for a large bird, roast, or piece of meat.

When you’re baking apples into pies and tarts, cutting them into uniform slices means they’ll cook evenly and best of all, just look gorgeous and perfect. Using a knife to do the work, especially when faced with the pounds of apples that are needed to go in a deep-dish pie, can be a tedious task when you’re trying to make the slices as even as possible. Time to pull out a gadget that might be gathering dust in the back of the kitchen drawer!

Q: Jalapeño juice got on my hands after cutting them up, and it sent my brain into overload! I couldn’t believe how bad the burning sensation got. This never happened to me before! I tried yogurt, bleach, lemon juice — nothing worked! The only thing that helped was putting my hands in a bowl of ice water. I was in a lot of pain for three to four hours. I saw today that another idea was to use olive oil then wash it off after a few minutes. That made some sense to me.

While those big knife blocks seem to send the message that every kitchen needs a dozen knives, it’s really not true. Invest in a good chef’s knife and small paring knife and those can take care of almost all of your slicing and dicing needs. There is one more knife, however, that is essential for cutting bread and tomatoes: the serrated knife.

As a kid, I was completely inept at opening bananas the usual way. Which is to say, from the stem. Like a normal person. I ended snapping the stem or squashing the banana every time. I can’t explain it. Then I discovered that there was another way, an easier way — the monkey way. Have you ever heard of this? Here’s how you open a banana like a monkey: Ignore the handle-like stem. Turn your banana upside-down and focus on the nubby, pointed tip at the opposite end.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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?

The first time I took my paring knives to a knife sharpenerI’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. Cheap paring knives aren’t that sharp to begin with, and months of slicing apples, cutting sandwiches in half, and sawing through plastic packaging (What? How do you get the plastic ring off the mayo jar?) don’t improve anything.

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 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 tourSerious EatsChichi 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. Crack off the head – Pick up the crawfish and crack or twist the head right off.

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.

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.

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.

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 cheeseSlicing 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! We do, of course, suggest using unflavored floss unless you like your chèvre with a hint of mint.

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?

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.