Kiwi fruit, a citrus grown everywhere from New Zealand, to Italy, and even Maine, is an often overlooked and severely underrated food. In situations where you’d normally reach for an apple or banana, the kiwi is a great alternative. One of the reasons for its undeserved second-tier status is its unfamiliar looks. Though the fruit itself is a tasty looking lime green, its fuzzy skin is a flat, unattractive brown color. The skin is perfectly fine to eat – it’s often compared to the fuzzy covering of a peach. But it’s not really suitable for salads or fruit trays. You can peel the kiwi fruit pretty simply, though, using the following steps.
Start by trimming the kiwi down.
Kiwi fruit is pretty small, and is a rough oval in form. Naturally, this isn’t the most convenient shape to peel. So before doing anything else, lay the kiwi fruit on its side and trim off the ends. You don’t need to lop off very much; roughly a quarter of an inch will do.
Get the tools for the job.
Though you might think that a potato peeler or similar gadget is necessary to peel a kiwi, the skin is surprisingly soft and easy to separate. All you’ll need is a spoon with a relatively thin edge.
Take the kiwi in the palm of your non-dominant hand.
Using your other hand, take the spoon and softly push the edge of it into the space between the flesh of the kiwi and its skin. As mentioned before, there is a sort of natural separation that exists already, so it shouldn’t be hard to carve out that starting point.
The key to kiwi peeling: rotation, rotation, rotation!
While holding the fruit steady, move the spoon in a cylindrical direction, separating the flesh from the skin for the entire circumference of the fruit. Then, fold back the length of the skin of the skin that you’ve separated and gently pull. The entirety of the skin will peel off in one piece.
With that, you will be looking at a fully peeled, ready to eat kiwi fruit. There’s a lot you can do with that peeled kiwi. It goes great blended with other citrus fruits into a juice, is a tasty garnish for a healthy salad, and can even be eaten whole. With your newfound knowledge of how peeling a kiwi fruit is performed, the possibilities are (pardon the pun) fruitful.