Preparing food in the kitchen often requires removing the skin from fruit and vegetables that you make for your kids and your family. Here are some simple tips that are for removing skins much faster than the methods you already know about.
Fruit Skins
While most adults will love biting into a nice juicy apple or peach, most kids will turn their noses up at eating these skins. This is why it makes sense to remove these skins if they want a fruity snack. Apple wedges and nectarine slices will have skins that aren’t so easy for kids to chew, and besides that, they’re not always attractive-looking. Here is what you can do to take off selected skins from certain types of fruit.
Kiwi
If you want to remove the skin from a kiwi, you can slice a single kiwi in half and use a spoon to scoop out the fruit from inside the peel before slicing it. The same can apply to papaya and mango but don’t forget to scoop out the seeds that are in the center of these fruits too.
Peaches, Plums, Nectarines
Since all of these have a pit inside, you’ll be better off slicing these fruit along the middle like you would an avocado. Twist them slightly to open the fruit and pry them apart slowly to reveal the pit. Use the edge of your fingernail or a butter knife to pry out the pit and throw this away. Then use a spoon to scrape away any leftover pit roots that are left behind. Use a large soup spoon to get under the skin and scoop out the fruit after that and then slice it up.
Apples And Pears
Harder fruits that have tough skins will do great with a potato peeler. You’ll need a good grip on your apple which is a lot easier if you take a short paring knife and stab it through the top of the apple into the center. As long as the blade isn’t showing through to the other side, you can use the handle of the knife to hold your apple safely and use the peeler for removing skins where you can.
Take out the paring knife when you’re done and cut off the very top and bottom where the peeler could not reach. Then slice the apple or pear down the center and use a melon baller to remove the seeds and core. You can then slice your apple or pear into wedges or cubes.
Oranges And Other Citrus Fruit
Peeling mandarins and oranges can be tricky if you don’t like getting your hands sticky with orange rind under your fingernails. One way to prepare an orange for kids is to give them a roll-out selection they can pick these piece by piece. Take your orange or mandarin and slice off the very top where the stem comes out. The same is done for the bottom section. At this point, you can make two or three smaller slices at one-third or one-quarter of your fruit accordingly.
Look inside the fruit to see where the sections join together at each wedge and slice your knife just under the rind of the skin. You can now twist this rind so it opens up and slowly unroll the entire peel so that each wedge section stands out like a wedge-shaped tag. Kids will love peeling these sections out one by one for an attractive fruit snack.
Carrots And Other Crunchy Finger Food Snacks
You kids will love carrot sticks and even carrot chip slices but most kids don’t know how delicious raw turnip slices can be. You can use a potato peeler to remove these skins easily and then you carefully slice these veggies into small bite-size sticks. Long carrots need to be sectioned into one-third of their length so you have at least 3-inches per section. Each section is then sliced down the middle and cut to length in equal sliced parts.
Each part can be laid sideways to make perfectly square sticks of equal proportion. Turnip is a bit like slicing an apple and will be easier to slice with a paring knife stabbed through the top to have a better grip while you peel it. Afterward, this can be sliced in half and then sectioned into slabs which are reduced into sticks. Turnip sticks are juicier than carrots and have a rich flavor that isn’t as bitter as some carrots can be.
Peeling Veggies For Kid’s Foods
If you want to cook certain veggies for kids that have skin and you don’t want to break out the potato peeler, there is a faster way. You can opt to blanch the skins so they peel off will little effort. This works perfectly for tomatoes, potatoes, but also works excellent for asparagus, white asparagus, and broccoli stalks. The trick is to have boiling water and a bowl full of icy water. Put these into the boiling water for no more than 15 seconds.
After this, they go into the ice bath for a minute or two. The skin will easily slide off and is ready to slice up for cooking or steaming. Because the skin is removed, it will make it easier to cook in a steamer after you slice these into sections. They can then be run through a food processor to be mixed into sauces and ground meat.
The Advantage Of Removing Vegetable Skins
Even after being cooked, the skin on some vegetables can be fibrous and takes away from the soft-cooked vegetable inside. It’s always a good idea to remove potato and tomato skins, yet, broccoli, asparagus, and cauliflower will have improved texture once their tough skins are removed. If you’re worried about wasting these skins, they can be used for compost or given to your dogs or pets if they are allowed to eat veggie skins.
Aside from all the benefits of skins on certain vegetables, they can also have trace amounts of pesticides that always need to be washed off. But for the most part, kids don’t think about these things anyway, and is just a precaution on your part. Skins should be removed so it doesn’t show up on the outside their fruits. And while they won’t mind if smaller fruits like grapes, cherries, or berries, they should be pitted and split so they aren’t considered a choking hazard.
Just be on the lookout for larger fruits for removing skins that could get in the way while your kids are eating them. Good luck!
