How to create culinary masterpieces with a vegetable peeler

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you think a peeler is only suitable for potatoes, you are wrong. With this simple tool, you can transform a variety of dishes.

Culinary aesthetics

The look of the dish is just as important as the taste. On Instagram, posts tagged with "" (#avocadorose) get thousands of likes. Because it is really beautiful.

Photo posted by Karen McLean (@secretsquirrelfood) Jun 21 2016 at 11:08 PDT

Another popular hashtag is #shavedavocado. It is unlikely that the toast tastes better because the avocado is so thinly sliced. But, you see, there is such a sandwich much more pleasant.

Photo posted by Avocados From Peru (@avosfromperu) Mar 22 2016 at 11:02 PDT

Aesthetics in cooking is of great importance. A beautiful presentation adds value to the dish. Seeing something wonderful on the plate, we immediately become a little gourmets and start not just eating, but tasting. And if it seems to you that cutting all these strips and roses is too long and tedious, then we hasten to please you. Sometimes you can create a culinary masterpiece with a simple peeler.

What is a peeler

A peeler is a tool for peeling vegetables and fruits. Thanks to its special design, it removes only the top thin layer, thereby reducing the amount of waste. Working as a peeler is faster and safer in many ways than a regular knife.

There are several types of peelers. Especially popular are the Y-shaped models, where the blades, like in a safety razor, are perpendicular to the handle. It is believed to have been invented by Swiss craftsman Alfred Neweczerzal in 1947. He worried that when peeling potatoes with an ordinary knife, most of the tuber was thrown away, and he made a tool that solved this problem.

But the scope of such peelers can be much wider. They can not only peel off, but also thinly cut vegetables, fruits, cheese and even chocolate to decorate dishes. At least that's what the editor of food site Epicurious (Rhoda Boone), which specializes in food design for photography, television and commercials, does so.

Vegetables

Many peeled potatoes, carrots, and other hard vegetables with a peeler. But not many people used it as a home carving tool.

It's simple. Peel the vegetable off first, then continue to cut it into strips. Their thickness can be adjusted depending on what kind of result you want to get. If your goal is to serve the vegetable salad effectively, press the peeler harder so that it goes deeper into the vegetable and the strips are thicker. If you want to roll vegetable slices or make something like a flower, the touch should be light.

The vegetable peeler can be used to beautifully chop raw zucchini, carrots, cucumbers, asparagus and celery.

Fruits

See how easily Rhoda Boone slices thin slices of avocado and salmon toast with a peeler.

Avocados are the perfect peeler fruit. Even when ripe, it is hard enough to be easily cut into slices. Mango, kiwi and apple are also good for this purpose. They can be used to decorate sweet pastries or add to fruit salad.

In addition, a vegetable peeler can beautifully and neatly remove the zest from lime, orange and other citrus fruits to decorate cocktails.

Cheese

Cheese makes any food a little better. And its thin slices can be used to decorate many dishes. They can be a wonderful (in every sense of the word) addition to salad or pasta. In the latter case, long plates will not melt as quickly as grated cheese.

For peelers, hard and semi-hard types of cheese are best suited: parmesan, pecorino.

Chocolate

It is difficult to get thin and beautifully curled chocolate chips. One peeler is not enough here. There is one more trick to know. This is the temperature. Too cold chocolate will break into pieces, and too warm chocolate will melt in your hands.

Take a large baking chocolate bar and let it sit at room temperature or microwave it for a few seconds at minimum power. You want the chocolate to become slightly malleable. Then use a vegetable peeler to scrape the shavings onto a plate. You can store your finished curls in the refrigerator until needed.