The Trick To Sharpening Your Vegetable Peelers Without Any Special Tools

A vegetable peeler is one of the most useful gadgets you have in your kitchen drawer, but you probably don't realize it. For super thin onions, you can shave them by using this simple tool, producing paper-thin onion slices ready to be layered onto your favorite sandwich. But the absolute best uses for your vegetable peeler include tasks like peeling potatoes, slicing cheese, making beautiful vegetable noodles, and creating delicate garnishes for a cocktail or mocktail. However, if you ever find your vegetable peeler isn't peeling as well as it should, it might be time to sharpen this culinary gadget.

Everything wears out and peelers are no different. Over time they can easily dull for several reasons. Herbivoracious points out that the dishwasher alone can be a bit of a nemesis for your vegetable peeler. In fact, they say that if you don't wash your peeler by hand, you are accelerating how quickly it can become blunt and less efficient. Even Ina Garten acknowledges this kitchen essential has a short life. "Vegetable peelers get rusty, they get dull, and they're very cheap, so you can just throw them out and buy new ones," she tells Food & Wine. 

But if you don't want to part with your beloved peeler, there is a trick to help you sharpen its blades without the aid of any special tools.

According to Lifehacker, the same technique you use to keep your knives sharp is the same method you can use on your vegetable peeler. They explain that if you simply take a paring knife along the blade or blades depending your peeler, the scraping together of the two metals will sharpen the blade. Lifehacker says this trick will also work on your cheese grater and you can immediately notice the difference because your job is much easier and quicker to accomplish. But a paring knife is not the only household tool you can use to keep you vegetable peeler ready to go.

Cuisine at Home suggests trying a metal nail file to get those blades of your peeler sharp. They say that using a nail file to sharpen your vegetable peeler is quite easy. Simply push the file back and forth between the two blades, starting with the bottom blade of the peeler and then repeating this method on the top blade. Of course if you are going to try one of these methods, Anny Studio recommends wearing gloves to protect your hands from any potential cuts or scrapes.