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Peeling potatoes is one of the most dreaded tasks in the kitchen. Whether you’re prepping holiday mashed potatoes or a special-occasion scalloped potato casserole, chances are you’ll need to peel quite a few spuds before starting to cook.
While looking for a way to accelerate the process, we stumbled upon a video from culinary creator The Gooch promising a new trick for peeling potatoes in a flash. His secret? A pair of kitchen shears, a quick boil, and an ice bath to loosen stubborn potato skin quickly. But does it work? I decided to put this hack to the test and find out if his viral video was the new secret to speed-prepped spuds.
How to Use Kitchen Shears to Peel Potatoes
This method is very similar to our recommendation for the best way to peel potatoes, with the addition of scoring them prior to boiling. While I do believe that the scoring step helps make the skin removal process easier later on, the success of this method varies between potato types.
Brown russet potatoes performed the best, as their thick skin most easily separated from the potato after boiling. Red potatoes were slightly more difficult to peel, and Yukon gold potatoes were not easy to remove, although I suspect that boiling them a bit longer could help. In the end, while this method might be too time-intensive for peeling just a few potatoes, it is a useful trick for prepping large batches at once.