Flash in the Pan

I hadn't realized that Kyocera had gotten into the kitchen market, but its Kyocera Advanced Ceramics division is making a line of cutting, slicing, and peeling products using ceramic blades. The advantage to ceramics over steel is that they don't rust and modern materials engineering can deliver extremely sharp edges. Sharpening them can be a pain, because it requires special diamond-covered tools. Also, you have to avoid scratching the blades, as that could theoretically become a point of stress and even fracture.

But with a vegetable peeler, you avoid many of these considerations. For one thing, have you ever known anyone to sharpen - or even try to sharpen - a peeler blade? Generally they are too small to easily handle, and the costs are typically low enough that you're not going to care. Finally, I've generally found that they fall apart before dulling.

The Kyocera peeler blade - made of zirconium oxide - was certainly sharp enough. I easily went through carrot peel with little pressure, though didn't have a squash, turnip, or other such difficult-to-peel vegetable to test with. Cleaning takes detergent and water. It's also dishwasher safe, which apparently is different from the Kyocera knives.

The handle was a little thin for my taste, but I have large hands and find that oversized grips most comfortable. Soemthing smart that I apreciated was a corer on each end of the peeler's yoke. That means whether you're right- or left-handed, you can use this peeler without altering how you work. At a retail price of $11.95, it's not a bank-breaker and definitely worth consideration if you're ihn the market for a new peeler. And if you have a heavy-duty peeling job, like a root vegetable or melon, you can choose the MEGA-Peeler, at $19.95, with a wider blade and 45º angle.

Labels: blade, ceramic, Kyocera, left handed, peeler

We've had more time with the Pamered Chef apple peeler, and experience has not been kind. We tried the unit on small apples, unlike the ones I used in originally testing it, and the results were misery. I kept trying to readjust the peeler blade, but it repeatedly bit too deeply into the apples, removing too much pulp. Eventually my wife gave up and moved back to a hand peeler and a knife to cut the apple. She's already planning to return the unit, so you might say that the first blush is off the apple. Maybe that explains why some were many times more expensive. Sometimes you don't get what you don't pay for.

Labels: apple, gadget, kitchen, Pampered Chef, peeler