Gadgets to strip the stalk from a strawberry
FEW things herald the arrival of summer like strawberries and the start of Wimbledon. But what’s the best way to remove the tough white centre and leaves — a process called ‘hulling’ — without wasting or damaging the delicate fruit?
MARIANNE POWER finds out which method wins game, set and match ...
FOUR-BLADE CLAW
Oxo Good Grips Strawberry Huller, £7 John Lewis/ Lakeland
METHOD: When you press the button at the base, four blades pop out and you insert these into a strawberry and twist. The blades form a claw, allowing you to scoop together hull and leaves. Pull the huller out, then push the button to discard them.
VERDICT: I was not impressed. The blades did well in piercing the strawberry and cutting around the hull, but did not have enough grip to pull the hull away. I destroyed smaller, riper strawberries and took several attempts to remove the hull of larger fruit and a lot of flesh was lost. 1/5
DOUBLE-SIDED KNIFE
Kuhn Rikon Strawberry Knife, £7.99 Dunelm
METHOD: One end of this knife looks like a serrated melon scoop, the other side is a fine blade. The idea is you scoop out the hull with the rounded end and chop the strawberry with the knife.
VERDICT: I expected this to be great but it wasn’t. It worked well enough on larger, not overly ripe strawberries but destroyed smaller, riper ones. The scoop was too big and the edges not sharp enough. 2/5
TWISTING TOOL
Chef’n StemGem Strawberry Huller by Chef’n, amazon. co.uk, £4.49 (or Lakeland)
METHOD: A similar approach to the Oxo Huller, this device has four blades which you insert into the strawberry, then twist so they come together, grabbing the hull and letting you pull it out.
VERDICT: Brilliant. Worked on every size strawberry. 5/5
GIANT ‘PIPETTE’
Trudeau Strawberry Huller, £7.99 Lakeland
METHOD: This device looks like a giant pipette. It’s a metal straw with an air-filled rubber sack on the end. Insert the straw through the bottom of the berry and push through so the hull and leaves pop off. They remain in the end of the tube. To remove them, squeeze the sack and they blow off.
THE VERDICT: Ingenious! Takes the hull of strawberries quickly and easily, but be careful not to squeeze too hard on the balloon — I did and the leaves went flying across the kitchen. 5/5
HANDY HULLER
Holden’s, £7.99, amazon.co.uk
METHOD: Insert the plastic straw like device into the bottom of the strawberry and put all the way through so that the leaves
pop off at the top. Then place the second straw inside the first straw, to take push the leaves out.
VERDICT: The plastic was not sharp enough to cut through the strawberry easily. It worked with a big strawberry but destroyed the small strawberry. Fiddly. 1/5
STRAW
METHOD: Insert an unbent straw into the bottom of the strawberry (the opposite end to the green leaf) and push straight through the fruit until the straw comes out the other side and pops the cap off. With large fruit you may have to run the straw twice to get it all, or use a knife to take off a bit of the leaves from the top.
VERDICT: Ingenious. Purists might disapprove that this method takes out the central column of the strawberry rather than just the top plug but this method is effective. Worked in one go with medium strawberries, with very large strawberries, I had to pop the straw through twice to get all of the leaves. 5/5
ICING NOZZLE
METHOD: Take the star shaped metal tip that acts as a nozzle in your icing bag. Plunge the pointy part in, turn, scoop out the hull. Then turn the tip upright and rap it on the counter. VERDICT: Worked quite well on small berries, but not on large ones, where I had to insert the icing tip three times in order to get out the hull. Fiddly and annoying. 1/5
SMALL SPOON
METHOD: The preferred Wimbledon option. Use a sugar spoon, grapefruit spoon or a teaspoon, ideally one with a fine sharp edge. Press the spoon’s edge under the green leaf and remove it like you would the top of an egg.
Anthony Davies, Head of Catering at Wimbledon says: ‘ Every
year, there is a fun competition between the team to see how quickly a guest serving can be hulled and placed into the bowl. Currently the record stands at 13.8 seconds!’
VERDICT: While I don’t think I can quite beat the Wimbledon record, the top came off quickly and easily in medium berries. With very ripe berries I crushed the fruit a bit, and I had to work harder with unripe large strawberries, but in all cases it worked. 4/5
CLIP WITH A GRIP
Strawberry Huller/ Corer by Kitchen Craft, £7.35 wayfair. co.uk
METHOD: The piece of folded metal (it looks a bit like a money clip) has rounded grabbers at the end which you press into the hull, and pull, bringing out leaves and ideally the hull at the same time.
VERDICT: I couldn’t get enough grip to pull up the hull, and crushed the small strawberry in the process. 1/5
POTATO PEELER
METHOD: Insert the top of an oldfashioned, pointed potato peeler under the leaves and rotate the strawberry, in the same way you did with a paring knife.
VERDICT: The top was not sharp enough to cut through the strawberry easily and it started to come apart. Much too time consuming, too. 0/5
TWEEZERS
METHOD: Close the tweezers around the base of the leaves and pull, removing, in theory, leaf and hull.
VERDICT: Took four goes to get the leaf off. You know the saying that life is too short to stuff a mushroom? Well, life is also too short to hull a strawberry with tweezers. 1/5