I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Ever since my daughter started cooking in a kitchen of her own. And then my daughter-in-law. And their friends. 'Thought I’d share it here, with a group of people who probably do more than their share of Paring!
I see very few young women who know how to actually use a knife to pare an apple, or a potato, or any food item that needs to have the skin removed.
And I grit my teeth to watch them chop off huge chunks, which include the skin - while wasting most of the poor fruit or vegetable. And not respectful of that old adage,
“If you are going to do something . . . do it right - or not at all.”
My daughter grew up watching me wield a paring knife - so that is not an excuse.
And I’ve tried to show her how to pare. AND how to sharpen her knife! (also not one of the things she thinks to stop and do!)
Seems to me that ‘this generation of young women’ - the ones that rarely enter a grocery store - but instead opt for delivery and to have some stranger (who knows nothing about choosing fruit, or veggies, or meat) pick out their groceries, are the main culprits.
Everything has to be SPEEDY SPEEDY SPEEDY. No enjoyment of the process.
No stopping to smell the roses.
No sentimentality or interest in learning the ‘way their grandmother did it’.
I see it all as a sad problem - of which ‘the lack of paring skills’ is just the tip of the iceberg.
I enjoyed the sentiment of your post. However, when it comes to the ‘waste’ element, some of us may think that paring is a waste of the fruit or vegetable too. Eat the skin- no work, no waste!
Well, @ZombieFruit - I like to make a game out of seeing just how thin I can make the ribbon of skin that I slice off! I know. A little crazy.
What can I say? . . . besides adding that I don’t always like the skin of some of my paring victims - and they have to go.
Karen, my daughter does the same. She doesn’t cook that often and I am sometimes wondering how she lives/feeds herself. I cook everyday trying to provide fresh and nutritional foods to my family everyday. Even though I have to spend a lot of time cooking, but seeing family members are taking good care of , I am happy to do that.
I use veggie peeler to peel the skin of fruits. It can peel very thin if I control my hand well. Different generation does things differently. We can’t change them much unfortunately
I never really mastered the paring skill either. I use a veggie peeler too, but the only thing I pare is apples when making pie. otherwise I leave the peel on everything.
I have used a paring knife for many, many years. This is the time of year to really re-hone my skills with all the apples ripening now. I test myself to see how thin I can get the skin off and also how long of a continual apple skin I can do without breaking it.
Meh, I use a veggie peeler. It is not quite like the veggie peeler you have because I sharpen my veggie peeler razor sharp with a diamond hone. I can peel most vegetables thin as a sheet of paper.
I’m also a bit of a knife fancier with 2 sets of carefully chosen knives for kitchen use. I have a set of MAC original knives for most slicing and dicing and I have a set of Chicago cutlery for jobs I would never use an expensive knife to do. I re-shaped the cutting edge of the Chicago Cutlery paring knife to make it both an effective grafting knife and a really useful kitchen paring knife.
@MikeC
Same here. As thin as I can get it!
I’ve tried peelers. I’ve nicked my knuckles (and besides, for me, it takes longer than paring.)
I use a different method of attack, tho. I quarter my apples. Cut out the core. Peel each quarter - and cut off any nasty spots.
I would likely have said I agree with you right up until recently. The little woman usually does all the veggie peeling and I’d quietly shake my head at all the wasted potato that was stuck to the skin when she pared the skin off. I hate peeling vegies so I knew better than to open my mouth. The peelings usually go straight into the compost and are well decomposed by spring.
Not this year though. A lot of the compost pile hadn’t rotted down by March, but I was enlarging the garden and I figured I needed all the compost I could get so I mixed in all the undecomposed compost as well.
I told her that there was a ton of unrotted peels in the mix and because of how thick they were I wouldn’t be surprised if they started springing up from her peelings.
She said she doubted it, and couldn’t see that happening. We planted out our first batch of tomato starts in mid April and by May I was seeing potato plants springing up all over the garden. We started harvesting good size potatoes by June (when we usually don’t even plant them until May). We’ve had enough potatoes to eat all summer, and we eat a lot of potatoes. Not bad for a totally unintentional crop that I didn’t even intend to plant.
I don’t look at those thick potato peelings as wastage anymore, because we’ve had the best crop of potatoes ever this year (we even had some tomato volunteers as well).
I had a job back in my younger days… where I got paid to fish… from daylight to around 11 am… then to clean fish, peel potatoes… making fries, hush puppies, etc… for a fish fry every Thursday for 2 summers.
We fed around 20 people each Thursday… including us 4 or 6 fishermen. In this lake we caught mostly bass and crappie.
We used pearing knves…or sometimes our pocket knives to peel potatoes or slice up onion.
My wife has a veggie peeler… but it gets very little use.
One exception … when making bulk amounts of pear preservs… we use a device called a… apple peeler corer slicer… it works well on firm pears like kieffer. Makes quick work of a lot of pears.
I am going to respectfully disagree with you. I also had a grandmother with level 80 pairing skills who would somehow produce potato skin so thin you could see through it. But as an engineer one of my most disliked sayings is “if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well”. That’s the perfectionist curse many young engineers have to overcome in order to advance.
Things have changed since my grandmother’s generation. Things like potatoes are a cheap commodity now and it’s not worthwhile to shop for them personally or to invest into advanced peeling skills. I do shop by myself for things like fruit where choosing carefully does make a difference. I don’t bother about peeling fruit efficiently because I love the skins and usually eat them
I watched this video awhile back… i never thought about using apple peels as a tea… supposedly good for stomach, kidneys, arthritis…etc etc. (another subject would be interesting in the value of peels).
I dont do much paring myself… i think there is goodness in the skins and i prefer the taste of potato peels and apple peels etc.
I guess this would be how i would do it if i had to.
my mother, aunts and grandmothers always peeled potatoes so as kids they would make us do it. then about 20 yrs ago someone smart said to leave them on. you would think it would have been the other way around. i came from a minimalist, thrifty family where nothing was wasted. now i just give mine a good scrub and cut out and damaged parts. Yukon gold and red Norland look great mashed in a bowl with the peel left on or as home fries.
