Free shipping on all orders over $49.See terms
 

How to Use Your Serrated Peeler, From Peach Pie to Peeling Tomatoes

This super-handy kitchen tool makes peeling peaches, tomatoes and plums so easy, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it. Plus, a peach pie recipe that a serrated peeler makes easy work.

3 min read

One of the most common questions we get is when to use a serrated peeler versus a straight peeler. Are all those little teeth really necessary just to remove the skin from soft fruits and vegetables?

Serrated Peeler Tomato
Tomato Peel

Well, yes. Just as a serrated knife slices cleanly through a tomato that a chef’s knife would have otherwise smush-ploded, a serrated peeler will expertly and easily remove a tomato's peel while leaving the fleshy fruit unscathed. That’s right, you can kiss goodbye the time-consuming process of plunging tomatoes into hot water and then shocking them in ice water to get the peels to release. A serrated peeler will remove those skins in no time and keep the tomato otherwise perfectly intact. In fact, with a serrated peeler the skin comes off in thin swaths, leaving more flesh behind than the boil-and-shock method.

Great for Zesting

A serrated peeler’s uses go beyond simple produce prep: If you don’t have a citrus peeler, then a serrated one is great for this purpose, too, especially if you need to zest a lime for cocktails. The serrated peeler easily takes off nice wide strips that have zero bitter white pith attached. If you’re looking for a solution to zesting a lemon for lemonade, this is your answer.

Peaches Mise En Place

Peeling Peaches and Other Stone Fruits

More than anything, we have found a serrated peeler a lifesaver with stone fruit—particularly with extra-ripe peaches, plums and apricots, where one false move with a knife can reduce the flesh to juicy mush. When delicate measures must be taken, a serrated peeler is the tool for the job. Trust us, your joy will be multiplied when you’re faced with not one, but a bowlful of peaches to peel, as you are when making a peach pie (the thicker peach skin is removed for consistency). Go ahead, give it a whirl, and you won’t believe the words coming out of your mouth when you serve it. “Peach pie? Oh, it was easy, really.”

Directions:

1.
Place a rimmed baking sheet on the bottom rack of the oven and preheat the oven to 425° F.
2.
Fit one crust into a 9-inch glass pie plate.
3.
Peel the peaches with your serrated peeler, then cut into wedges and toss in a large bowl with the lemon juice, granulated sugar, cornstarch, nutmeg and salt. Spoon into the pie shell, then top with the second rolled-out crust. Trim and crimp the edges to seal. Cut four slashes into the top crust. Refrigerate the pie for 15 minutes.
4.
Brush the pie (not the edges) with the cream, then sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Bake on the baking sheet on the bottom rack until the pie starts to color, 20 to 25 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375° F and move the pie up to a middle rack (leave the baking sheet in place to catch drips). Continue baking until bubbly in the center, about 35 minutes more. Let cool on a rack 3 hours before cutting.

For more tips on how to get the most out of your kitchen tools, sign up for OXO’s newsletter.

#OXOBetter

Commit every single day with @OXO