Preparing Vegetables & Fruits

Preparing Vegetables & Fruits

Peeling

Peeling vegetables may not be heroic, but it's simply a part of the process if you, like us, enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables. We've found that this task becomes much less daunting and even easy and quick when you have the right tools at hand.

Straight Peeler

Straight peelers, also known as vertical or I-peelers, are great for round fruits and potatoes. With a straight peeler, you can work from your hand, and your thumb takes the lead. We particularly like the version with a swivel blade. The movable blade adapts to the shape of the item being peeled. With ergonomically shaped handles, it's also possible to peel larger quantities without your hands cramping or hurting.

Y-Peeler

Y-peelers, in T- or Y-shape, are particularly suitable for vegetables with a long shape and for stalk vegetables. Zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, asparagus, and radishes can be peeled in no time with a Y-peeler. The peeling motion comes not from the wrist but from the whole arm. Even if the work takes longer, the process is not tiring, as it can be peeled without much effort. Your hands remain relatively relaxed, especially if you have chosen an ergonomic and comfortable grip shape. Y-peelers are also available with a swivel blade.

Serrated Blades

Serrated blades are used when you need to peel vegetables and fruits with hard skin and soft flesh. Tomatoes, peppers, or even mangoes are best peeled with a serrated blade. This allows the skin to be cut easily without crushing the soft interior.

Julienne Peeler

Julienne peelers or slicers cut vegetables into fine and uniform strips. This kitchen tool is indispensable in upscale restaurants. Vegetables such as zucchini, celery, and carrots are cut with it, and the evenly thin strips are not only attractive: since all strips have the same thickness, the vegetables can be cooked precisely. This keeps everything crisp and retains its texture. Julienne vegetables are used as a garnish for soups, as a vegetable bed under meat and fish, as a pasta substitute, and as a topping on pasta and salad.

Peeling knives

Of course, you can peel fruits and vegetables with any knife, but with a special peeling knife it's particularly easy and quick. Peeling knives have a shape and size adapted to their purpose. Often, their blades are curved in a beak shape - this allows for easy handling of the knife, even with round fruits and vegetables. Peeling knives are also called tourne knives. The word "tourner" comes from French and means "to turn" or "to round". In the kitchen, "tourner" refers to the preparation of food, mostly vegetables and fruits.

Removing cores and pits

There are all-rounders for hollowing out, removing cores and stems, as well as specialists: ballers, fruit pitters, cherry pitters, plum pitters, and many more useful helpers.

A pepper corer, for example, easily and quickly removes seeds and ribs from peppers and chili peppers with its sharp loop. This makes it easy to stuff peppers and by removing the partitions, the spiciness of chilies and peppers can be reduced.

The tomato stem remover quickly removes unwanted stem attachments from fruits or vegetables with its sharp teeth. It is also ideal for removing strawberry calyxes. The serrated spoon easily penetrates the flesh and removes the stem attachment in one go. Especially when dealing with a larger quantity of strawberries, the stem remover is a practical little helper.

Slicing

Vegetable slicer

A vegetable slicer is a basic tool that belongs in every kitchen. With a vegetable slicer, you can quickly, effortlessly, and cleanly slice your vegetables, fruits, and even other foods such as cheese into uniform slices. The thickness of the slices is usually adjustable.

Mandoline

Usually, a mandoline is the deluxe version of a vegetable slicer. With a foldable foot, the mandoline can be tilted towards the work surface, making it easier to use and reducing the effort required. With various interchangeable blades and additional cutting inserts, you can not only slice simple slices, but also ridged slices, thin julienne strips, strips, sticks, thick sticks (fries), cubes, gratings, and rings (onions). The thickness of the slices is also adjustable here.

A professional mandoline delivers paper-thin slices, for example when it comes to truffles, fine slices for raw vegetables and salads of radishes, radishes or cucumbers, and thick potato slices for hearty potato salad. Some interchangeable blades are shaped like graters. This allows you to roughly grate or finely grate vegetables, fruit and cheese.

The sharp blades also master hard vegetables. A finger guard or residue holder is often included in the delivery, with which you can use up the last piece without risk of injury. After cleaning, a blade guard (also called a zero slider) usually supplied ensures that you do not accidentally injure yourself on the sharp blades when storing in a drawer or cupboard.

And quickly some kitchen knowledge: The name mandoline actually comes from the musical instrument of the same name. The parallel blades are said to be reminiscent of the strings of a mandolin.

Cutting

Nakiri Knife & Usuba Knife

Nakiri and Usuba knives are traditional Japanese vegetable knives. With these types of knives, extremely fine cuts are possible. Japanese chefs also use them to cut the famous decorative works of art from fruit and vegetables. This carving art, called Mukimono, is a central element of Japanese cuisine and food culture. “Nakiri” literally means “leaf cutter”. The Nakiri knife has a double-sided edge that is common for European cutting habits. In contrast, the Usuba vegetable knife is sharpened on one side. The back of the blade of the Usuba has a hollow grind. This reduces adhesion and prevents the annoying sticking of the cut vegetables to the knife blade.

The handling of a single-sided knife like the Usuba is unfamiliar and initially often a bit tricky for non-Japanese. However, with some practice, working with a Usuba becomes better and once you master the technique, you don't want to miss your Usuba knife anymore. For those who do not want to change and want to start cutting immediately in a proven way, we recommend the Nakiri with a double-sided edge. Due to the very similar shape and construction, the function as a vegetable knife is almost identical for both variants, at least for European demands. Speaking of shape: Although it reminds a little of a kitchen cleaver, vegetable knives are by no means suitable for chopping bones, cartilage or bones. Nakiri and Usuba knives are exclusively intended for cutting vegetables, fruit and herbs.

The cutting motion resembles more of a chopping than a rocking or sawing motion due to the up and down movement, but as mentioned, it is only used for cutting vegetables.

In addition to these frequently used multitools, there are a lot of specialists among kitchen helpers. They are not needed in the kitchen as often, but when they are used, they show their full potential.

Fruit Spoon

The sharpened edges of the fruit spoon make it easy to hollow out melons, zucchinis, and eggplants. Its semi-circular shape prevents unintentional piercing of the fruit skin. Also useful as a practical ice cream scoop.

Potato Curler

The potato spiral is twisted like a corkscrew into potatoes, beets, carrots, radishes, or other hard vegetables. The resulting spiral strips can be served raw, fried, or cooked. A trendy idea for snacks and decoration.

Spiral Cutter

Spiral cutters are a fine little tool. They produce uniform and very long vegetable strips in the form of garlands. This allows for impressive decorations to be created.

Carving Knife

For food art and carving, as vegetable carving is called today, there are very specific tools that make decorative work with food much easier and make this art accessible to amateurs as well. With the triangle tools pumpkin carving set, you can easily learn the basic techniques of carving. The fruit spoon is useful for hollowing out the pumpkin. You can use the flesh for pumpkin soup, as an ingredient for cakes, or as a puree. (Note from the heroes: Be careful - not every pumpkin is edible! We recommend the variety with the appropriate name "Ghost Rider" or a butternut or Hokkaido pumpkin). Afterwards, the sharp carving knife is perfect for cutting frightening faces into the hard pumpkin shell.