Peeler

The two shapes

Swivel (straight)

Blade in line with the handle. You pull it towards you. Good control for small round things — potatoes, apples — and for peeling in the hand.

Y-shaped (harp)

Blade across the end. You push it away or draw it down. Faster, more comfortable for long strokes, and much better for hard vegetables like squash and celeriac.

Serrated

A Y-peeler variant for soft skins — tomatoes, peaches, ripe pears — that a smooth blade slides off.

Julienne

Toothed blade that cuts fine strips. Good for salads and garnishes, a novelty otherwise.

Which to own

Both a swivel and a Y. They are inexpensive and genuinely suit different jobs.

Using one well

• Peel away from yourself with a Y-peeler and towards yourself with a swivel, holding the vegetable in your other hand and turning it.
• For long vegetables, lay them flat on a board and peel along them. It is safer and more even than holding them up.
• Take the top and bottom off a round vegetable first so it sits stably.
• Peel into a bowl rather than onto the board, so the peelings do not spread everywhere.
• Let the peeler do the work — pressing hard is what removes flesh and causes slips.
• A peeler also makes ribbons of courgette, carrot and cucumber, shaves parmesan and chocolate, and takes wide strips of citrus zest for infusions.

Sharpness, and why peelers get thrown away

Peeler blades are thin and hard and they do go blunt, and unlike a knife most people never sharpen one. A blunt peeler drags and tears, needs considerably more pressure, and removes a noticeably thicker layer — which over a year is a real quantity of food.

Some blades can be touched up on a fine stone or with a ceramic rod, at a very shallow angle. Most cannot practically be sharpened at home, and peelers are cheap enough that replacing one every year or two is reasonable.

The test is simple: it should take a clean strip off a potato with almost no pressure. If you are pressing, replace it.

What not to peel

• Potatoes for most uses. The skin is good, and skin-on roast potatoes and mash are both excellent.
• Carrots and parsnips, if they are fresh and clean. A scrub is usually enough.
• Courgettes, aubergines and cucumbers, unless the skin is tough.
• Apples and pears for most cooking. The skin holds pectin and colour.
• Ginger with a spoon rather than a peeler — the edge follows the knobbles and wastes far less.
• Garlic, which is faster crushed flat with a knife.

The other things it does

Most peelers spend their lives on potatoes and carrots and are capable of considerably more.

• Parmesan shavings, drawn across a block. Better than any grater for a salad or a plate of carpaccio.
• Vegetable ribbons — courgette, carrot, cucumber, asparagus — for salads or as a pasta substitute.
• Chocolate curls, drawn along the edge of a bar at room temperature.
• Butter curls for the table, from cold butter.
• Citrus zest in wide strips, for infusions, cocktails and marmalade, with none of the pith a grater catches.
• Shaving hard vegetables raw — fennel, kohlrabi, celeriac, raw beetroot — where a mandoline is overkill.
• Removing the strings from celery and chard stalks, in one pass.
• Peeling ginger is the one thing it is worse at than a teaspoon.

Common questions