Kitchen Tools for Chopping and Peeling Vegetables

Kitchen Tools for Chopping and Peeling Vegetables - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. My favorite kitchen tools for chopping and peeling vegetables starts with a good set of knives. Different vegetables and fruits are different sizes, so you want to make sure you have different sizes of knives. For large things like watermelons, cantaloupes, hard winter squashes, I want to use a big, sturdy knife. That way I have full control over whatever I am cutting. For smaller items, what I mostly use day to day is this kind of knife. It fits nicely in my hand. It is a good size. And this shape of knife is called a shantoku. It is excellent for vegetables and for prep. It also has, as you can see, these hollow little notches on the side, and what that does is as you are cutting, the food does not stick and it falls off the side. It makes excellent cutting for bell peppers and things like that, where you often have a nice stack of bell peppers that move up the side of your knife. This way they fall off and it becomes a lot easier for cutting. Also, for things that have harder skins, like pineapples, I really like using a serrated knife. You probably would not have thought of this because you think of it as your bread knife, but a serrated knife is excellent for anything that has a hard outer skin, for really cutting everything off and doing a nice, easy job. Now, for peeling my vegetables, on the market today you have two general types of peelers. I mean, there is a lot of peelers out there, but the two biggest ones are a Y-peeler, like this, or your standard peeler, like this. Now, a sharp peeler can mean the difference between a big pain and an easy time in the kitchen, especially if you have a lot of carrots to peel. So, make sure you get a nice, sharp peeler. This one, right here, is a ceramic peeler and it stays sharp for a long time. So it really does well in the kitchen. But this one is one of my favorites. Not only is it purple, my favorite color, but it also has a nice, sharp blade and it works really well. I traditionally peel by putting my thumb on the bottom of the object and peeling toward me. I find that that is the easiest way to peel and I think that that is something that you could adopt in your kitchen. Now, let’s talk about what to do with this little guy once you are done. How about a trash bowl. A trash bowl is something that I keep on the counter at all times for all of my scraps: eggshells, pieces of plastic covering, all kinds of peels. And that way I am not searching for my trashcan every time I am doing a job, and everything goes much quicker and much more efficient. Plus, it stays a lot more sanitary because I am not touching the trash every five minutes. So, what I do is I keep a bowl on my counter, and I peel right into it. That way everything stays nice and clean. My workstation stays nice and clean, therefore it is more sanitary and more safe. If there is a lot of peels or objects on your cutting board, you can move your knife to try to get around them and accidentally cut yourself. So, make sure you keep a clean workstation, use a trash bowl, and have sharp, efficient tools. And those are my favorite tools for chopping and peeling vegetables.