A neighbour hands over a carrier bag of windfalls, or you get carried away at a pick-your-own, and suddenly there are twenty apples on the side that need dealing with before they go soft.
Peeling them with a knife is fine for two or three. By apple number ten your thumb is sore and the peel on the chopping board has got thicker than the bits you’re keeping. A crank peeler is the old-fashioned answer, and it’s still the quickest one I know.
How it works
This one is from a brand called tigwin, and it’s the classic design. You push the apple onto the prongs at one end, then turn the handle. The apple travels along a threaded rod, and as it turns, a sprung blade takes the peel off in one long ribbon. At the same time, a second blade at the far end cores it and cuts the flesh into a continuous spiral. When you pull it off you’ve got a peeled, cored apple that falls into even rings with one cut down the side.
You don’t have to use every blade at once. Crumble or pie? Leave everything on. For baked apples you want them whole, so take the coring blade off and it’ll just peel. Making apple sauce with the skins left on for a pinker colour? Keep the peeling blade clear of the fruit and it only cores and slices.
The coring blade also comes off completely, so it’ll peel potatoes too. It’s quicker than a peeler if you’re doing a big batch of mash, though it works best on fairly round potatoes.
Where it falls down
- It grips with a suction base rather than a clamp. That means you don’t need a table edge, but it does need a smooth, non-porous worktop. On wood or textured stone it may slide around.
- The blades are stainless steel, and the metal parts are chrome plated. The listing pictures spare blades alongside it, which is worth having, since the peeling blade is the part that gets blunt first.
- Really soft or badly bruised apples don’t hold on the prongs very well. Firm cooking apples and eaters like Braeburn are the ideal.
- It’s a fairly big, awkwardly shaped thing to store. If you only bake with apples once or twice a year, a good peeler will do the job.
One last tip: keep a bowl of water with a squeeze of lemon juice next to it. The rings come off so quickly that the first ones will be going brown before you’re halfway through the bag.
