6 Vegetable Peelers That Are Worth Buying for Potatoes, Tomatoes, and More

Almost any potato peeler can handle a single carrot for a salad, but when you need to tackle a bushel of tomatoes for homemade tomato sauce or a big ol’ butternut squash, a specialized vegetable peeler helps.

A vegetable peeler is very similar to a potato peeler, but can vary in size and blade style to make it more suitable to specific foods. For example, tomatoes, with their thin skin and tender flesh, are much easier to peel with a serrated blade. Large vegetables with tougher skins — like that butternut squash, as well as eggplant — benefit from a wider blade. Asparagus, on the other hand, is more efficiently peeled with a smaller, more curved blade. Once you have an effective tool on hand, you can find all kinds of genius new uses for your peeler.

How we test vegetable peelers

We lined up more than a dozen vegetable peelers for testing by the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Kitchen Appliances and Technology Lab. We peeled butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and apples on the universal peelers to determine the comfort and ease of use, the ability to navigate irregularly shaped produce, and the thinness of the peeled skins. Then we tested the specialized peelers (like corn peelers and eggplant peelers) on the vegetables they were suited for and compared results. We scored each on the smoothness of the peeling process and the effectiveness of the eyer. The most efficient peelers made our list of the best vegetable peelers:

• Best Overall Vegetable Peeler: Swissmar Scalpel Blade Peeler
• Best Value Vegetable Peeler: Kuhn Rikon Piranha Y-Peeler
• Best Electric Vegetable Peeler: KitchenAid Spiralizer Plus Attachment
• Best Corn Peeler: OXO Good Grips Corn Prep Peeler
• Best Vegetable Peeler for Arthritis: Chef’n Palm Peeler
• Most Versatile Vegetable Peeler: Tovolo Magnetic Tri-Peeler Set