Clever Shortcuts To Peel And Slice Faster
shivani k 
Image: Shutterstock
Won’t you agree if we said that to peel or slice your fruits and vegetables in your kitchen is like saving a few months of your life? Everybody has struggled with this. If grocery shopping wasn’t confusing enough, the bigger confusion lays in to decide what to cook. And, just when you’ve figured that part out, the horror strikes again which is chopping the vegetables or fruits. And all of this peeling, chopping requires some skill, and unless and until you’re a graduate from a culinary school you can never do it precisely.
All that being said, let’s not forget that we live in the world of hacks. Shortcuts rule this millennial! And when it comes to kitchen too, we have our own fair share of shortcuts, right? Some of which were passed down to us by our mothers and the rest we’ve figured out on our own from the internet. Let’s take a look at some shortcuts that will help us peel and slice faster.
1. Cherry Tomatoes
They make very good additions to our salads, pizzas, and pastas. The problem with these is that they are extremely tiny and to chop them is quite a task. You cannot really hold each tomato and chop them. This has two problems: one, its time consuming and two, it’s possible that you’ll hurt your finger.
The Hack : You will need two same-sized plates. Arrange the cherry tomatoes one after the other on one of the plates. Use the other plate to cover the tomatoes, like it were a lid to cover the dish. Note that there needs to be a gap between the plates when you close it against each other. Now, take a sharp knife and run it through this gap of the plates. You will end up having perfectly halved cherry tomatoes.
2. Avocadoes
They can make a perfect salsa dip or a rich spread on a slice of bread. But, how do we get the goodness of the avocado outside its shell? Here’s what you have to do:
The Hack : firstly, wash them clean. Now take a knife and run it down the center of the avocado till its seeds and continue to cut through like you were marking the diameter of the seed. Then hold the avocado in one hand and from the other hand hold the top of the avocado and twist slightly. You will have two halves of the avocado now. Remove the seed from the center. Go grab a spoon and scoop out the goodness from the shell now.
3. Chopping Onions
We always cry while chopping them, don’t we? And we can still never get them finely chopped even after crying over its fumes. It’s pretty annoying and we totally get it.
The Hack : We found you a video from the culinary God himself, Gordon Ramsay. Observe the video closely to know how to chop this devilish vegetable the right way. Use a knife that has a heavy handle. Cut the onions into halves. Then use only three fingers, align one in front and the remaining two at the back of it like how its shown in the video. Now, hold the onion with the help of these aligned fingers and start slicing.
4. Cutting Mangoes
It’s called as the king of fruits and that’s for a reason. Everybody loves summers because of this one fruit. It makes us forget the scorching heat at least for some time. We are also aware that the seed of this fruit makes it tough for us to chop it the right way, right? Some just squeeze the pulp out and enjoy the goodness of the fruit. But, that can’t be done when you have guests at home.
The Hack : This is one fancy way of cutting the mango right. Firstly, figure out the axis of the seed of the mango which is always at the center of the fruit and cut through axis. You will get two perfect halves of the mango and one center part which contains the seed. Take one of the halves in your hand. With the fruit pulp facing towards you, take a knife and draw horizontal and vertical lines on the pulp. Know hold the sides of the mango, the skin basically and push the pulp outwards. You will find the cube like mango pieces popping out like shown in the above picture. Serve it as it is or run down the knife to cut the cubes off and serve them.
5. Slicing Peppers
They are colorful and can you can deceive anybody and everybody into eating them owing to its beautiful colors. But the problem lies in cutting them. While de-seeding a pepper most of us end up throwing parts of the pepper away too. Here’s how to do it right.
The Hack : Take a pepper of your favorite color and place it on the chopping board. Cut the top and the bottom parts off and keep it aside. Now, cut a line at the edge of the pepper, this will help you open the pepper from one side like how it’s shown in the video. Now slowly de-seed it by rolling the pepper on the cutting board as shown in the video above. Voila! The seeds are out. Now you can either slice your pepper or dice them up.
These were some of the easy hacks we found for you. If you know of any other easy-peasy hack to chop vegetables and fruits, let us know in the comments below.
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