Andrew Zimmern’s Ginger-Peeling Hack Is $3 at Amazon

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You can ditch the knife and peeler.

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From sharpening knives to making rice on the stovetop, there are some pesky kitchen tasks that home cooks tend to loathe, whether that’s because they’re time-consuming, tricky, or dangerous. For years, my most dreaded kitchen task was peeling ginger, until a recent trip to my parents’ house, where I watched my mom use not a knife or potato peeler, but a dinner spoon to peel a finger of ginger with shocking ease.

It turns out, experts have been using the hack for years — including celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern, host of “Bizarre Foods.”

Amazon

The spoon trick not only makes it easier to peel ginger, but it helps reduce waste. Zimmern demonstrated the ginger-peeling trick in an Instagram Reel last year, saying: “I’ll break a piece off that I need, and then I use my ginger peeler, otherwise known as a spoon. If you hold it in the palm of your hand, that spoon can get into all those nooks and crannies — that way you’re not wasting ginger.”

There’s also an aesthetic benefit. In the video, Zimmern noted that ginger’s natural irregularities are “beautiful.” By cutting around all of those horns, he said, you can maintain the piece’s natural shape and cut slices that look great on the plate. There’s so much you can do with a perfectly peeled finger of ginger — shave it thin for pickling, toss it into a bubbling broth, press it into fresh juices, and so much more.

Want to peel ginger like the experts? You don’t need to buy a whole flatware set. This no-frills spoon is perfect for peeling ginger, and it’s less than $3 at Amazon. At 0.1 pounds, the stainless steel spoon is lightweight to maneuver, and its long handle helps create an ergonomic grip. The spoon has a simple design that’ll get the job done

If you happen to have extra ginger when you’re done cooking, Zimmern says it’ll “stay beautiful and fresh in your refrigerator wrapped in a brown paper bag — not a plastic sandwich bag — in your vegetable keeper.”

So many delicious recipes call for ginger, so the next time you’re prepping mushroom dumplings or batching wintry cocktails, put down the paring knife and snag this spoon to make peeling it a breeze.

Amazon

At the time of publishing, the price was $3.