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To Peel Potatoes or Not: is it Safe to Eat The Peel?

Should you peel potatoes or not? Many are unsure whether there are actually many vitamins under the skin. You can read everything you need to know about the potato and its skin here.

Potatoes: That’s why you should peel them in the future

In principle, according to the consumer center, potatoes can also be eaten with their skins on. However, this does not increase the health value. On the contrary: When eating the peel, there is a risk of absorbing increased amounts of solanine. The natural toxin mainly forms directly under the skin and in the sprouts. In order to keep the solanine content as low as possible, the potato plant must be stored correctly.

If stored incorrectly, the solanine content can increase to levels that are harmful to health and ultimately irritate the mucous membranes and damage the nerves. Stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea and headaches are often the result.

Since solanine is heat-resistant and is also retained during cooking, roasting and deep-frying, it is advisable to always eat potatoes without their skins. In order to avoid major losses of vitamins and minerals, it makes sense to first boil the potatoes and then peel them.

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Cooking Tips

To Peel Potatoes or Not? It’s Really Easy With This Trick

Some say potatoes should be peeled, others advise against it. We reveal what’s really true and show a trick you can use to peel potatoes in a flash.

You can conjure up many delicious dishes from potatoes: baked potatoes, potato gratin or simple boiled potatoes. The tuber is versatile, tasty and healthy. When preparing the potatoes, many people ask themselves: should I rather peel the potatoes or can I eat them with the skin on?

Toxins in the potato peel

In addition to nutrients and roughage, the potato peel also contains toxic glycoalkaloids: a-solanine and a-chaconine. These toxins occur naturally in the potato. They are mainly concentrated in the skin and in the germ. Inside the potato, on the other hand, there are significantly fewer toxins.

Glycoalkaloids are heat stable but water soluble. This means: High temperatures do not affect the toxins. If, on the other hand, you cook the potatoes in boiling water, the substances are removed from the skin.

Our commercially available potato varieties naturally do not contain any concentrations of these toxic substances that are harmful to health. The actual content of these substances is additionally influenced by several factors:
Unripe potatoes contain more toxins than ripe potatoes
Damage (e.g. during transport) and light favor the formation of toxins
If potatoes are stored too warm or too cold, more toxins are also formed
So if your potatoes are ripe, undamaged and stored properly, you don’t have to worry about the glycoalkaloids.

Potato peel protects the nutrients and flavors

Potatoes contain a lot of vitamins B and C. However, some of these vitamins are lost during cooking. The potato skin acts as a barrier when cooking: If you cook your potatoes with the skin, fewer flavors and nutrients are released into the water. This means that more of these valuable substances remain in the potato.

To peel or not to peel potatoes?

Although there is a significant amount of glycoalkaloids in the skin, you don’t necessarily have to peel potatoes. The Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection confirms that potatoes can be eaten with their skins without hesitation as long as they are of “normal quality”.

If you still want to peel the potatoes, we recommend that you only peel them after cooking. In this way, the potatoes retain as many nutrients and flavors as possible. Make sure, however, that you use the potatoes soon after cooking so that you don’t lose any more flavor and nutrients unnecessarily.

Green spots are an indication of increased levels of toxins. Therefore, cut out the green areas generously. Very green potatoes should be discarded entirely.

Trick: peeling potatoes made easy

You can easily peel potatoes with the following instructions:
Wash the potatoes and score the skin all over with a sharp knife.
Boil the potatoes until they are done. Make sure that the potatoes are not overcooked, otherwise they may fall apart when you peel them.
Place the cooked potatoes in ice water and chill for at least 10 seconds.
You can then simply peel off the peel either with your fingers or with a knife.
You can actually peel potatoes quite easily using this method. However, this isn’t magic either, and the peel won’t always come off “in one go”. Especially if the potato is a bit misshapen or has small “spots”, you will definitely have to touch up some areas.

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Cooking Tips

Peel and Skin Tomatoes: Easily With a Simple Trick

Peeling tomatoes is not that easy. Unless you try this method—then the tomato skin will almost come off by itself!

Simply peel tomatoes in 4 steps

Tomatoes are among the most popular vegetables. They are delicious raw, but also cooked in a delicious tomato sauce or soup. To make them particularly velvety, many recipes recommend peeling the tomatoes. It works like this:

1. Score the tomato

Take a sharp kitchen knife and score the bottom of the tomato with a cross. This will make it easier to peel later. Meanwhile, bring water to a boil in a saucepan. There should be enough water to completely submerge the tomato.
Tip: You can then use the water for the pasta.

2. Blanch the tomato

Add the tomato to the pot of boiling water and let it blanch for about 30 seconds. Then lift them out of the pot with a slotted spoon.

3. Deter the tomato

Immediately place the tomato in a bowl of cold water. You will notice that the skin of the tomato is already starting to peel off.

4. Peel the tomato

Now you can peel the tomato. To do this, take them out of the water, let them drain a little, and use a small knife to peel off the skin from where you cut them.

For example, you can use the peeled tomatoes to prepare a delicious tomato sauce. To do this, sauté a piece of onion and garlic in olive oil, add the tomatoes and herbs of your choice and let the sauce simmer. Season with salt and pepper and possibly a little sugar. If you fill the hot sauce into clean jars or bottles and seal them tightly, the tomato sauce will keep for several months.

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Cooking Tips

Peel and Clean Celery: A Simple Method

You should peel the celery before eating it – regardless of whether you dip it or prepare it as an oven vegetable. The interior of the perennials and the hard threads are particularly important. We’ll show you how to remove them.

Clean and peel the celery

1. Trim celery:
First you separate the stems from each other and remove the leaves inside the celery.
Then cut off the bottom ends of the perennials. It is best to remove everything white to avoid bitter substances.
You should also cut off the top ends once they have dried.
2. Wash Celery:
Now you can wash the celery to get rid of dirt: make sure to also remove the dirt from the grooves and clean the celery thoroughly.
Hot water and a vegetable brush are best for this.

3. Peel the celery

After cleaning, you can remove the hard fibers. You can use either a knife or a peeler to do this:
Use the knife to cut about 1mm into the celery and then pull off the thread between the knife and your thumb.
If you use a vegetable peeler, you’ll remove the threads just as effectively. However, you will also remove much of the edible celery.
Tip: Basically, when peeling and cleaning celery, you can proceed in a similar way to rhubarb. If you are used to peeling rhubarb, it is also very easy to peel celery.

Once you have washed and peeled the celery, you can eat it as finger food with a delicious dip, or fry, steam or cook a celery soup.

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health

Home Remedies for Cellulite and Orange Peel

Many natural home remedies for cellulite and annoying orange peel skin. So you can fight the orange peel skin and get smoother skin on your legs and buttocks.

Many women know the problem, the skin on the buttocks, thighs, or upper arms gets dents. This cellulite should be the reason to find old and unattractive because there are small helping home remedies.

1) Contrast shower to tighten the orange skin

There is a lot of good advice on cellulite. Nobody has to sit out treatments for hours because if you pay attention to small things in personal hygiene, a significantly better complexion can develop. With a little effort, you can create contrast showers that effectively stimulate blood circulation. This allows you to reduce the existing accumulation of water in the skin.

2) Declare war on cellulite with coffee grounds

You can also use the simple remedy of coffee grounds to have a high effect in the fight against cellulite. Before you buy expensive creams in the pharmacy, you should simply try these simple remedies. In every household, coffee grounds remain in the filter bag, which does not have to be thrown away. Instead, collect the coffee grounds and use them as a kind of scrub before the daily contrast shower. As soon as you use it twice a week, you will notice improvements in cellulite in just a few weeks. You should always massage gently from the feet up.

3) Raw potatoes increase the effect on orange peel skin

Younger women in particular often become impatient very quickly when they declare war on cellulite. You can also use raw potatoes to support the peeling with coffee grounds and the alternating showers. To do this, the raw potatoes must be peeled normally and then cut into thin slices. Place these thin potato slices on the affected skin and cover with a cloth. About a quarter of an hour is sufficient for the potatoes to release their draining active ingredients into the skin. If you cannot lie down during this exposure time, you can also fix the potato slices with normal cling film. After you remove the cling film, you need to wash the skin thoroughly with cold water.

4) Silica against orange peel

If you sometimes have problems with your skin and feel your connective tissue weakening, you should help yourself with some silica. This is a very old remedy that tightens the connective tissue and supplies the body with silicon, which often also provides a remedy for dull hair, brittle nails, and a wrinkled complexion. With this trace element, of which two-thirds of silica consists, you supply moisture to the body. This gives the tissue significantly more resilience. So silica is considered a small beauty product with a surprisingly large effect.

5) Train away orange peel skin

You can’t train away cellulite completely, but you can support the natural tightening of the skin. Normal weight with a balanced diet helps to improve the complexion. Regular movement and training exercises specifically for the legs and buttocks help to visibly reduce the dents.

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Cooking Tips

Peel Almonds: This Trick is Very Easy

Would you like to peel almonds but don’t know how to do it? It’s easy. We explain how it works and what you should know about almonds.

Peel almonds – what do you mean by that?

Almonds are delicious and contain valuable oils and proteins. You can get them in stores mainly as almond kernels, where the hard shell has already been removed. If you want to process them, you may want to peel the almonds even further for certain recipes. What is meant by this is the thin brown skin that surrounds the amygdala. This skin is often a bit bitter. But it can be easily removed with a simple trick.

How to peel almonds

To peel almonds, you have to blanch them briefly. When dry, you will hardly be able to remove the skin. How to do it right:
Put as many almonds in a saucepan as you need.
Cover the almonds with water and let the almonds boil.
Let the almonds cook for 2-5 minutes.
Pour them into a colander and shock them with cold water.
The skin can now be removed very easily: You can practically push the almond out of the skin. The best way to do this is to press your fingers together at the rounded end of the almond.
If you want to peel a lot of almonds, the above method can be a bit tedious. In that case, try this trick:
Blanch the almonds as described above.
Put the quenched almonds on a kitchen towel and fold it shut.
You rub this packet through a bit and then collect the skinned cores.
You may need several passes until all the almonds are shelled.

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Cooking Tips

Peel Garlic: These Tricks Are Quick and Easy

Peeling garlic can be time-consuming and tedious. A few simple tricks will help you to quickly and easily remove toes from their shells.

Trick #1 for peeling garlic: Crush the clove

Garlic refines almost every recipe. These tricks make cooking with the spicy tuber even more fun.

The first trick is simple, but still very useful.

Mash a clove with an object such as a wide knife or spatula.
The shell can now be easily removed.
The advantage of this method is that you hardly have to touch the toe. This will make your hands smell less.

Note, however, that this method crushes the toe quite severely. If you need whole cloves for your recipe, the other methods can help.

Trick #2: The jar trick

For the second trick you need something that you are guaranteed to have at home: a screw-top jar.

It is best to put several cloves or a whole bulb in a screw-top jar. Now screw the lid on.
Shake the jar vigorously for about half a minute. The glass should then look like the picture in the middle.
Throw the peel that has already come off in the organic waste or dispose of it on the compost.
Shake the jar vigorously again and discard the detached peel.
If the skin hasn’t come off all the toes yet, you can easily peel them off now.
For this trick to work, you should

shake really long and hard.
use a jar with a hard lid. (So ​​the tuber has enough resistance when shaken.)
make a vertical shaking motion.
This method is particularly suitable for peeling several cloves or a whole tuber at once. If you don’t need all the cloves right away, you can pickle the garlic. Alternatively, you can use it to make a delicious garlic oil or garlic paste.

Trick #3: Soak garlic before peeling

The last trick you have to prepare a few hours in advance.
Soak the toes in water for about 2-3 hours.
The peel is now soaked and can be easily removed from the toe.
For this trick to work, the garlic needs to be soaked long enough. To check whether the shell is soft enough, you can take out a clove in between. Now test whether it can be peeled easily. If not, you can just let them soak in the water longer.

Have fun trying!

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Cooking Tips

Peel Sweet Potatoes: is it Necessary?

Peeling sweet potatoes is not necessary in most cases. In this guide, we explain why unpeeled sweet potatoes are even healthier.

Even if the name suggests otherwise, sweet potatoes are not related to ordinary potatoes: They taste different, look different, belong to a different plant family and can almost always be eaten with their skins – unlike regular potatoes, which contain toxins such as glycoalkaloids can stick in the shell.

By not peeling your sweet potatoes, you not only save time and avoid food waste. You are also doing something good for your health. We’ll tell you why unpeeled sweet potatoes are healthier.

Sweet potatoes: Even healthier without peeling

The sweet potato is full of valuable nutritional values: the roots are rich in fiber, minerals such as potassium and magnesium, vitamin A and vitamin C and are also a good source of vegetable protein

You should therefore avoid peeling sweet potatoes for the following reasons:
In and directly under the skin there are many important nutrients of the healthy root. For example, the peel is particularly rich in fiber and vitamins
In addition, the skin of the sweet potato also contains phenolic acid, a secondary plant substance. Phenolic acid has an antioxidant effect and thus protects against free radicals.
According to a 2016 study, the peel even contains substances that can prevent cancer.
Especially when you cook sweet potatoes, the skin also protects the nutrients inside the root.
Especially with sweet potato fries or wedges from the oven, the skin forms a crust that not only looks pretty, but also tastes delicious.
You can also leave the skin on when grilling sweet potatoes.
Not peeling saves you another step and therefore time.
In addition, it is also more sustainable not to peel sweet potatoes: by using the whole root, you avoid unnecessary waste.

Don’t peel sweet potatoes: You should pay attention to this

If you want to eat sweet potatoes with skin, you should only pay attention to the following points:
Whenever possible, buy organic sweet potatoes. This is not only good for the environment, but also guarantees you healthy vegetables without pesticide residues. Pesticides can otherwise possibly be deposited on the shell.
Wash the roots thoroughly before processing them: it is best to clean them under water with a vegetable brush. For a particularly thorough cleaning, you can also use baking soda
Cut off about ½ an inch from both ends of the sweet potatoes. The ends often taste bitter.
If the sweet potato has already formed sprouts, you should cut them off before eating.

Peel sweet potatoes: This is the best way

Depending on your taste, it can sometimes still make sense to peel the sweet potatoes – for example if you want to mash them without any pieces. In this case you have two options:
Either you peel the root vegetables in the classic way with a vegetable peeler, as you would with other vegetables. Of course you can also use a sharp knife – but then you should be particularly careful to only cut away the peel and not even more from the healthy root.
Or you can boil the sweet potatoes whole first, including the skin, and then remove them. Once cooked, sweet potatoes are particularly easy to peel. Most of the time you can just pull the shell off. Another advantage of the method: the shell protects the nutrients during cooking.
Either way, don’t throw away the bowl. You can use them in vegetable broth or soups. Alternatively, you can feed them to animals like horses or rabbits, or at least compost them.

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Cooking Tips

Peel Hokkaido Pumpkin: Necessary or Superfluous?

The Hokkaido pumpkin is one of the most popular pumpkin varieties. Not only is it healthy and tasty, it is also versatile and easy to prepare, as in most cases it does not need to be peeled.

Spherical, rather small to medium-sized and bright orange: This is what the Hokkaido pumpkin looks like. Its aroma is slightly nutty, somewhat sweet and reminiscent of chestnuts, its flesh is juicy, buttery and low in fibers. The Hokkaido pumpkin is not only healthy (it offers a lot of vitamin A and potassium, for example), but also versatile: Whether as a soup, fried, grilled, baked, pureed or finely grated raw in salads – the Hokkaido pumpkin can do everything make and always tastes good.

Many amateur cooks initially shy away from pumpkins because they want to avoid the time-consuming peeling process. But what about this pumpkin – does Hokkaido have to be peeled?

Peel Hokkaido pumpkin: necessary or superfluous?

With some types of pumpkin, you really can’t avoid peeling: their skin is so hard and thick that it is difficult to digest and could lead to stomach upset. These varieties include, for example, snake gourds. With many other pumpkins, it is purely a matter of taste whether the skin stays on or not.

The Hokkaido pumpkin, which is not considered particularly easy to prepare for nothing, does not have to be peeled:
It has a very thin and easily digestible skin, which can also be eaten raw.
With most cooking and cooking methods, the peel also becomes so soft that it does not interfere with chewing.
Exceptions could be:
Potato cakes/pancakes: Because potato pancakes are only in the pan for a relatively short time, the skin may not soften completely.
Pureed soups: If you only prefer your soups to be very finely pureed, you can peel the Hokkaido pumpkin beforehand. Because depending on which kitchen appliance you use for pureeing, it is possible that small pieces of peel can still be found here and there in the soup.
The skin also gives dishes a more intense pumpkin flavor. And since most of the vitamins are located directly under the skin of many fruits (the Hokkaido belongs to the berry family), you also get a nutrient plus with the skin.

Conclusion: In most cases you do not need to peel the Hokkaido pumpkin. It’s the perfect type of pumpkin if you like it quick and easy to prepare. But you should pay attention to one thing:
It is best to buy organic Hokkaido pumpkins. In this way you avoid that there are pesticide residues on the shell, which are used in conventional agriculture and are suspected of being harmful to health. Pesticides are also a burden on the environment, the animals and the people who work with them. No pesticides are used for organic pumpkins. However, you should wash the squash well before preparing it to remove any impurities.

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Food

Peel Cucumber: Does it Have to be?

To peel cucumbers or not? Many people face these questions when they want to prepare a cucumber. We’ll show you the pros and cons and whether it’s really necessary to peel the cucumber

Many consumers are unsure whether they should peel the cucumber. There are several reasons to peel the cucumber:

There are a number of vegetables such as carrots or beetroot that are usually peeled off before eating.
Another reason is that consumers bought the cucumber without plastic packaging in the supermarket and are afraid that there are microorganisms on the skin.
The cucumber is damaged on the peel.

peel cucumber? That speaks against it

There are good reasons not to peel the cucumber:
The skin of the cucumber contains a relatively large number of vitamins and minerals. They are very important for the body and you should therefore eat them. However, one cucumber is not enough to cover your daily requirement: 100 grams of cucumber, for example, contain an average of 160 milligrams of potassium – you need 4000 per day. In addition, the cucumber also contains vitamin K (16 of 60 µg per day).
Dietary fiber, which is important for digestion, is also mainly found in the peel. 100 grams contain about 0.5 grams of fiber – you need about 30 per day.
By scrubbing and rinsing the cucumber under running water, you can easily remove any bacteria that might be on the cucumber. However, detergents or sprays are superfluous.
If you buy organic cucumbers, you can avoid many pesticides. Because synthetic sprays are forbidden in organic farming. The organic seal provides orientation.

cucumber is healthy

The cucumber is a summer vegetable: its main season  is between July and September. Whether peeled or not: Cucumbers are tasty and also help to improve the fluid balance on hot days. Because they consist mainly of water.

The nutrients of 100 g of cucumber:

12 calories of energy
0.2 grams of fat
0.6 g proteins
1.8 grams of carbohydrates
0.5 g fiber

Tip: Sliced ​​cucumbers taste good with a dip or in a salad, for example.

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