How to Peel Almost Anything

The great English cook Prue Leith once famously remarked "life's too short to stuff a mushroom." I feel pretty much the same way about peeling a grape.

However, there may come a time when you want to do such a thing and it's handy to have a simple method standing by. Not that peeling a grape is all that difficult, just tedious. You simply do it.

The same cannot be said of such things as peaches, apricots and even small pickling onions. The trick in each case is to use hot water. With just about all thin skinned fruit, including tomatoes, you simply make a cross shaped nick in the skin, put them in a bowl and cover them with a very hot water for about 30 seconds. This cooks the skin and makes it very easy to remove.

You can do the same thing with baby onions, but you may need to leave them in the water a bit longer. That's not a problem because there is no real danger of cooking the onion owing to the toughness of the skin. That's not the case with most soft fruit so be careful not to leave them in the water for too long.

Melons, pineapples, grapefruit

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These require a different technique and one that involves using a knife. It follows, therefore, that the knife needs to be very sharp. The technique in itself is very simple but does require a little practice.