Amazing ways to improve your fruit-preparation technique

Ahh. Artisanally cored berries. I’m impressed.

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Well, I’m a simple guy… I find that nibbling the edge gives me a perfect serrated finish.
One of the great byproducts of this technique is strawberry toe jam.

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We call those “hedgehogs” in our house.

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“I blame Apple…”

Apple didn’t break anything. You were reading it wrong.

The trick is to hold the knife at an angle and spin the berry. It’s really fast.

EDIT: Wrote this and then read @crenquis’ replies to @SmashMartian - he’s joking, but he’s got it right. The trick is not to move the knife, but the food.

That sounds like it could get confusing. What culinary term do you use when you’re preparing a hedgehog?

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Fortunately, we’re vegetarians so the issue never arises!

Tried that and found that strawberry pincers are less fiddly, especially if your berries are over-ripe or bruised. /shrugs It’s just easier for me, that’s all. Pincer in, core out, berry in one bucket, waste in the other.

Of course, if you’re doing anything less than ridiculous amounts, knives are almost always the go-to for fruit prep. Must try that tip with the glass though, come mango season.

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Totally cool. :slight_smile: People should work how they’re most comfortable in the kitchen. I’m left-handed, and so when I was a kid, I used to horrify my aunt at holidays when I’d go to cut things while working in her kitchen. It looked wrong to her, and she was sure I was getting ready to lose a thumb! (I still have both.)

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Vegetable peelers used to be one-sided, and my uncle used to tease me mercilessly for peeling away from myself. It was only as an adult that I realized it was due to being left-handed: there literally was no blade to work with if I peeled toward myself so I had figured out at a very young age how to peel away instead.

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Yep - I peel away from myself as well. I have a really nice set of peelers now - they’re from Microplane, and are very comfortable. (I was lazy before, and didn’t hunt a pic of the ones I use.) I can totally recommend these for people of either hand, and my uncle (who has fibro myalgia) hasn’t had any problem with them either.

Even though I’m left-handed, I still use a mouse on the right side of my computer - because when I first was trained on them, mice only had cords arranged to sit on that side! I’m partially ambidextrous, and can train to use my opposite hand, but for cutlery I’m extremely left-handed! Just holding a fork feels so wrong!

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Those peelers look a lot more ergonomic!

Same here with the mouse/cord. For so many things, it just makes sense to learn them right handed from the start because that’s how they’re always going to be.

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Also, by going in blind you miss the lines the seeds follow. You don’t want cubes with seeds in them, you want seedless chunks of reasonable but not necessarily consistent size. You can either laboriously remove the seeds, or just cut away the parts that contain seeds and chuck them in the compost. Either way, the technique shown won’t work at all well, and as zach said, it’s also a good way to cut yourself.

Perhaps they’re using the wrong sort of watermelon.

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They’re not ceramic. They’re stainless steel with a coating, but they’re still not very good knives.

Dunno. I’m partial to wild strawberries - a pain in the arse to pick, but, oh my!, cultivated strawberries do not compare! However, you definitely don’t want to use a straw on them - you’d lose the entire berry.

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What now, then? I got a cheap one, and it’s really quite decent - way sharp, and unlike steel knives I can put it in the dishwasher afterwards. For $40, a knife that has so far stayed sharp for a year and a half of almost daily use doesn’t seem that dumb.

Of course, I wouldn’t stab a watermelon with it - the blade is much less robust than steel, and I’d worry about breaking the tip off. Right tool for the job and all that.

I respect that you are a high disciple of having no uni-tasking tools in the kitchen, but these are also useful in other rooms of the dungeon.

I AM familiar with those. But only when I’m jammin. :smiley:

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