Poll: Would you rather dice an onion or peel a carrot? We’d take the onion any day, even if it made us cry. There’s something about the tediousness of peeling, the cold and wet produce in our hands, the stringy scraps of carrot that cling to every surface and never make it completely in the trash…ugh. But we just found a method for carrot peeling that’s easier, faster and—dare we say it?—fun. (No surprises here, it came straight from TikTok.) Watch and learn, friends:
This Hack Is the Fastest Way to Peel a Carrot, Hands Down (and We Learned It on TikTok, Natch)
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Published Jul 4, 2023
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What’s the Typical Way to Peel a Carrot?
Most cooks, ourselves included, will peel a carrot (or any other veggie) something like this: You put the blade of the peeler to the produce, swipe down, lift the peeler, return to the top and repeat until finished. But as it turns out, all that lifting and repeating can be eliminated, saving you time and effort.
How Does This Hack Make Peeling Faster?
If you’re using a swivel peeler (like this one from OXO, $12), you may not have realized that the blade has two sharp edges. That means you can actually peel without every lifting the peeler from the carrot. You simply glide the peeler back and forth along the carrot, and it's so much more efficient.
We tried the trick at home while making a batch of carrot ginger soup, and aside from cutting down on prep time, it was downright fun to run the peeler along our produce at lightning speed. (The scraps are still annoying, but you can’t win them all.)
Will the Method Work With Any Vegetable Peeler?
We haven’t personally tried this method with a Y-peeler (aka the ones that are shaped like the letter Y), but many of them also have a blade with two sharp edges. If that’s the case, you could try this hack by pushing the peeler up and down along the carrot instead of swiping, but we don’t think it would be quite as efficient, because the hand motion is less natural.
So now that we *love* peeling carrots, can someone invent an onion that dices itself?
Katherine Gillen is PureWow’s senior food editor. She’s a writer, recipe developer and food stylist with a degree in culinary arts and professional experience in New York City restaurants. She used to sling sugary desserts in a pastry kitchen, but now she’s an avid home cook and fanatic baker.
