How to Peel a Kiwi
David Malosh
Are you a kiwifruit fan? The small fruits with fuzzy skin and bright jade-green flesh are packed with vitamin C and potassium. They're sweet and refreshing to eat and a great addition to fruit salads or your breakfast yogurt or oatmeal. They're also available year round in grocery stores, so what's not to like? Well that fuzzy brown skin for a start.
The kiwifruit can be consumed in its entirety, fuzzy skin and all. (In fact, the skin is packed with nutrients and eating the skin increases the amount of fiber from the fruit by 50 percent.) But most people prefer to eat kiwifruit without any skin. The simplest way to prepare and eat your kiwifruit is to cut it in half, and scoop out bites with a spoon (a grapefruit spoon makes it even easier).
Related: Our Guide to Buying, Cutting, and Enjoying Dragon Fruit
If you're not snacking on a whole (or half) kiwi then you'll need to peel the fruit. Have you ever tried to peel a kiwi using a vegetable peeler? Or a paring knife? Then you'll know that both tools can fail and the result in losing some of the kiwifruit to mush as you grasp it to peel or produce an oddly shaped fruit instead of a smooth oval ready for slicing into neat rounds.
Luckily, there is an incredibly easy way to peel a kiwi—and the technique doesn't require any special tool or gadget. The only thing you'll need? A standard teaspoon. Trim off the ends—use that paring knife for this step— and insert the teaspoon between the skin and flesh of the kiwifruit. Then run the spoon along the circumference to loosen the flesh. Slide it out in one piece. With the peeled kiwi on its side, slice it into rounds ready for snacking, fruit salad, even salsa, relish, or to garnish a cocktail.
