How to Choose Graters, Peelers and Slicers

Almost everyone owns a peeler that has lived in the drawer for a decade. It still technically peels, in the sense that it removes something from the potato, but it takes three passes and half the flesh goes with the skin. The same drawer usually holds a box grater with one usable side and a mandoline nobody has touched since the incident.

These tools take the repetitive work off your knife. Chosen well, they are faster and safer than a blade. Chosen badly, they are the reason prep feels like a chore. Here is what actually separates a good one from a bad one.

Peelers: swivel versus Y, and why the pivot matters

A straight or swivel peeler holds the blade in line with the handle and you pull it towards you. It gives fine control at the tips and ends, which is why it wins on awkward shapes — pumpkin ridges, ginger knuckles, the eye of a potato.

A Y-peeler holds the blade across the top like a razor and you push it away in long strokes. It is faster on volume and takes a thinner strip, which matters more than it sounds: a peeler removing 2mm instead of 1mm off every potato throws away a noticeable share of what you paid for.

The detail that decides whether either feels good is the pivot. Swivel blades sit on a small hinge so the blade tracks the curve of the vegetable instead of skating off it. A fixed, unpivoted blade is cheaper to make and is the main reason a peeler gouges. Flex the blade — if it moves a few degrees and springs back, the pivot is doing its job.

Sharpness is not adjustable here. There is no practical way to sharpen a double-edged blade at home, so a blunt peeler is a replaced peeler — expect two to four years of regular use.

The single-job tools that actually earn their space

Most novelty gadgets waste a drawer. The test is simple: does it replace a job that is genuinely fiddly with a knife, and do you do that job often?

Apples are the clearest case. A rotary peeler that clamps to the bench and cores, peels and spirals in one crank turns a tray of apples into a two-minute job — worth it if you bake, pointless if you eat one apple a week. Pineapple is the other: a corer-slicer twists down through the fruit and lifts the core out in the same motion, far cleaner than quartering it and trimming the woody centre from each wedge.

Graters: how the hole is made changes everything

Two graters can have identical-looking holes and behave completely differently, because there are two ways of making them.

Stamped holes are punched out of sheet metal, pushing up a raised lip around each hole. That lip does the cutting. It works, but it tears more than it slices, so cheese comes off in ragged shreds and softer ingredients turn to paste. Stamped graters also dull steadily as the lips flatten.

Etched blades have their teeth acid-cut into a thin steel sheet, leaving razor-fine edges with no raised lip. They shave rather than tear. On hard cheese the difference is obvious — etched teeth produce a light, fluffy pile that melts evenly instead of a clumped wad. Fine etched rasps are also the only thing that handles nutmeg, lemon zest and garlic properly, because those need shaving, not shredding.

A flat handheld rasp is the most useful single grater for most kitchens: it stores flat, works over a bowl or straight onto a plate, and rinses easily.

If knuckles are what puts you off grating — and they should, since the last third of a block is where nearly every grater injury happens — a rotary drum removes the risk. Your hand stays on the crank and the cheese sits in a hopper under a spring-loaded plate, so you can grate down to the last few millimetres without going near the blade.

5-Blade Rotary Cheese Grater — Suction Base, Vegetable Shredder

Garlic and ginger are their own problem. Both are fibrous, and a standard grater shreds those fibres into strings that wrap the teeth and clog it in seconds. A fine rasp or toothed press ruptures the cells instead, which also releases far more flavour: crushing garlic lets the enzyme alliinase convert alliin into allicin, the compound behind raw garlic's punch. Sliced garlic is mild, crushed garlic is not, and that is chemistry rather than preference.

Slicers: consistency is the whole point

You do not buy a slicer to go faster. You buy it so every piece is the same thickness, because uneven pieces cook unevenly — the thin ones burn while the thick ones stay raw. That is the difference between a decent gratin and a disappointing one.

Adjustable slicers work on one principle: a fixed blade with a bed you raise or lower relative to it. Look for a mechanism that locks. Wire cheese slicers are the exception and excel on soft and semi-hard cheese, because a wire displaces less material and does not drag; wires do stretch and eventually need replacing.

Egg slicers seem trivial and are not. The wires cut a boiled egg without compressing it, which no knife manages — a blade pushes the white ahead of it and smears the yolk. Turn the egg 90 degrees between two passes for dice.

Multi-blade choppers and the mandoline problem

Interchangeable-blade choppers cover dicing, julienne and shredding in one body, and they are the tool most likely to end in a trip to a medical centre. Nearly every serious cut happens the same way: the food gets small, the guard feels clumsy, and someone finishes the last piece by hand.

Two rules make them safe. Use the guard for every piece, including the last — if the offcut is too small to hold, discard it or finish it with a knife. And never wash blades in a sink of suds where they disappear; rinse under running water with the edge facing away.

Otherwise, look for a collecting container underneath rather than an open frame, and check the blades store in a rack rather than loose in the box.

Spiral cutters sit in the same family and are worth having if you actually eat vegetable noodles. Courgette and cucumber spiralise well because they are firm and even; anything hollow, seedy or soft collapses. Onions are the other niche worth solving — a slotted holder grips the layers so they cannot fan apart mid-cut.

Bread is the last consistency problem, and a guide rather than a blade solves it. A slotted frame holds the loaf square and stops the knife wandering diagonally through soft crumb — the cause of the wedge-shaped slice that will not fit a toaster. A hand-crank slicer with an adjustable plate gives repeatable thickness across a whole loaf, which pairs with how you then store it.

Manual Bread Slicer — Adjustable Thickness, Hand Crank

Care: why these tools die early

Almost every prep tool that fails does so for the same three reasons.

• Dried-on residue. Cheese fat and starch set hard in fine teeth within about twenty minutes, then need scrubbing that flattens the edges. Rinse immediately, before you sit down.
• The dishwasher. Detergent is strongly alkaline and abrasive; over repeated cycles it etches fine teeth and pits the steel, and blades knock against the rack. Hand-wash anything with an edge you care about.
• Standing water in the join. Where a blade meets a plastic housing or wooden handle, trapped water works into the seam and lifts it. Dry the seam, not just the blade.

Brush along the teeth, never across them — a brush dragged sideways rolls the fine edges over. Store them in a shallow tray rather than loose in a drawer, so blades are not resting against each other; our guide to small kitchen organisation covers ways to do that without buying more drawers.

Frequently asked questions

Can you sharpen a vegetable peeler?

Not practically. The blades are thin, double-bevelled and usually mounted in a pivot you cannot remove, so there is no way to hold a consistent angle. A ceramic rod run lightly along each side restores a little bite on a fixed straight blade, but a genuinely blunt peeler is at the end of its life. Replace it — the flesh a dull peeler wastes over a year adds up faster than the tool does.

Why does my grater clog with soft cheese?

Because the fat is warm. Soft and semi-soft cheeses smear rather than shred once they are above roughly 10°C. Chill the block in the freezer for 15 minutes before grating, and use the coarsest face you have. A light coat of neutral oil also helps the shreds release.

Is a mandoline or multi-blade chopper safe to use?

Yes, with the guard, every time. Most injuries happen on the last few pieces, when the food is too small to hold comfortably and the guard feels awkward — exactly when it matters most. A cut-resistant glove is a sensible addition if you use one often, and never wash the blades submerged where you cannot see them.

Do I need a box grater if I already have a rasp?

Only if you grate in volume. A fine handheld rasp covers zest, garlic, nutmeg and hard cheese, which is most of what a home kitchen grates. A box grater earns its space when you shred a whole block or a pile of carrots, because the coarse face is faster and the frame stays stable against the board.

The short version

Choose a peeler by the pivot and replace it when it stops biting rather than pressing harder. Prefer etched grater teeth over stamped, and keep a fine rasp as your default. Buy a slicer for consistency, not speed, and treat multi-blade choppers as sharp tools that need the guard every time. Rinse everything before the residue dries, hand-wash it, and dry the seam. Do that and these tools last years — and your knife stays sharp for the jobs it is actually for, covered in our complete guide to choosing a kitchen knife.

Browse the full range of prep tools and kitchen gadgets in our complete collection.