Some recipes require the absence of the lovely skin, such as for boiled potatoes, mash potatoes and roasted potatoes.
There are many effective ways to peel your potatoes, but you may not have heard of some of these – here are several ways to strip your potatoes with ease and speed.
The manual approach
A proper potato peeler is the ideal tool for this task as they’re incredibly easy to use. Place your blade at the bottom of the spud and slowly slide it towards the top positioned so the peeler is moving away from you and not towards you. Attempt to do this in one motion so you create a smooth edge rather than a jagged cut, you then just work your way around the potato rotating as you go. Iron out any dark spots, you may have to go over these as they can run quite deep in the flesh.
If you don’t have a peeler, then not to worry! Get yourself a chopping board, place your spuds on top of it and reach for the old fashioned kitchen knife. First things first, be sure to cut one end of the potato off – this makes the peeling process easier. Stand the potato up on its newly flat surface steadying it with one hand, you can then glide you knife down skimming the edge from top to bottom being careful to take as little of the white flesh as possible. To complete the spud, rotate and repeat this process until you have a completely peeled potato.
Using the pan
Many people settle for the old fashioned manual peeling approach, but you can actually use the cooking process to your advantage for this task. Put a slice through the skin of your spuds and place them in a large pan with water, bring the pan to the boil and leave them in the water for 15 minutes. Prepare a second pan of cold water and place your boiled potatoes in once the time is up, this is so you can handle them. Now for the satisfying part – pick up the cooled spuds and you’ll magically find that the skins slide off to a gentle touch.
