If you've ever made home made apple pie or apple sauce, you know how much work it is to peel a bunch of apples! Fortunately, some innovative people before us invented some handy gadgets to help with that task.
If I only have a few apples to peel I will use one of my hand-held vegetable peelers to do the job. My favourite is the blue horizontal-blade peeler from Tupperware. It works very well on firm apples, although I have to be careful not to peel my thumb in the process - it is sharp!
When I have a half-bushel of apples to peel, I much prefer a counter-top apple peeler machine. I have two: a heavy-duty metal one which suction-cups to the work surface, peels and cores the apples, and spiral-cuts each apple as it rotates. It can sometimes be fickle when it comes to the peeling part of the process and the blade can cut either too deeply into the apple or skip over the skin.
My favourite peeler for a big batch job is the Star-Frit plastic model. It holds the apple firmly while the razor blade skims off the peel extremely thinly so no apple flesh is wasted. It works very well with any sized apple since the blade arm is spring-mounted and the tension will adjust accordingly. The blade is easy to replace as well. The only downside to this peeler is that it doesn't cut the apple or remove the core - only peels it. Once you push the apple off the prong holder you must core and slice it. The metal apple corer/sectioner works well for that job, but sometimes if the apple is very firm or mis-shapen it does not cut evenly and some of the core remains on each apple section (which then needs to be manually cut off). I usually just cut the apple in half and then use a melon baller to remove the core. You can watch my video demonstrating this method here.
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