3 Best Kitchen Gadgets for the Harvest! (#1 Apple Peeler!) (2024)

I confess to being a lazy cook. For example, theidea of peeling, coring, and slicing apples makes me a reluctant pie maker.But the right tools get your apples ready to bake in a pie—or, your fruit and tomatoes strained for sauce—in no time. See three of my favorite kitchentools.

Processing Apples, Tomatoes, andPears

In past years, after spending afew of the most beautiful days of fall inside processing apples, tomatoes, and pears, I could sympathize with Robert Frost when he wrote “I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired.” He was referring to apples and this year was a banner year for apple growingin my area.

After last season’s non-existent harvest, we were very excited when the apple trees bloomed during a break in the spring rain so the bees could do a proper job pollinating them. We had enough rainfall this summer to reverse last season’s drought and the apples drank it up. They were big and juicy!

We sold and ate a good many but they were ripening faster than we could keep up. When we planned our mini-orchard we chose early, middle, and late season varieties to spread the harvest over a longer period oftime.

The season started with the Gravensteins which we were able to handle; now Honey Crisp and Liberty are ready to pick, and Jonagold and Winesap are still to come! Without the help of my partner Tom and my handcranked kitchen appliances, I’d still be peelingapples.

Hand Crank ApplePeeler

We made apple pie filling using the handcranked peeler to speed things up. Nothing can peel, core, and slice apples as fast as this three-in-one rotarytool.

This simple machine draws children (and even grown men) as soon as it is set up. There is something fascinating about turning a handle and having all the work of peeling, coring, and slicing done right before youreyes.

It’s fast, fun, and easy clean-up! Great for preparing fruit fordehydrators,too.

Foley FoodMill

We also made applesauce from the apples that were too misshapen to work in the peeler.For small batches, I usually use the Foley FoodMill.

It’s fast, great for straining out the stems, seeds, and skins, and easy to clean up. Besides making applesauce, it’s great for straining tomato seeds, too—quick and easy. If you’re a canner, a food mill is a greatgadget.

SqueezoStrainer

This weekend, however, we brought out the big guns—putting the Squeezo Strainer to work. I was given this glorious piece of machinery by my sister-in-law when she gave up her big garden and went back to work fulltime.

Since we grow organically and use no spray, I cooked the apples skins and all—it makes for a pretty pink sauce—and sent it through the Squeezo which spits the peels and seeds out one end while the yummy strained sauce comes out the sidechute.

It worked so well I tried making pear sauce too. The pears have been plentiful this year as well as the apples. Our trees were planted in 2009 and this is the first really big harvest we have gotten fromthem.

The Bartletts, my favorites, are an early variety. If I were a perfume designer I would create a swoon-worthy scent from ripe Bartlett pears. Since they are not great keepers we made pear sauce. It came out a little watery so I had to cook it down a bit. That concentrated the pear flavor even more making itdee-lish!

Since the Squeezo was all set up, we put a load of tomatoes through it too. Just wash them, cut out the bad parts, and throw the chunks in the hopper. It doesn’t get much easier than that! Following my sister-in law’s lazy way to make tomato paste, I poured the strained tomato sauce into a cheesecloth-lined strainer set over a bowl, put it in the fridge for the night, and in the morning had thick tomato paste. No cookingnecessary!

As I said, I am a lazy cook and I have my share of labor-saving devices but these simple hand-cranked machines are huge time-savers this time of year and no electricity isrequired.

See the best apples for apple pies, applesauce, and baking.