Preparing apples

Sometimes we find ourselves with apples. Fresh apples. And while eating them fresh is a good thing to do, sometimes we want to make something with them. This can lead to paring and coring and slicing. Here I offer the quickest way I have found to do these things.

Paring. Start by slicing off the two ends.



Then pare the rest of the apple, from end to end:





Cut the apple in four pieces, through the root ends. Then, angling the knife, cut the core out of each of the four pieces.



Chop or slice, as needed. Slicing goes quickly if you use a chef's knife and just run through the pieces. Watch a cooking show for the technique. In fact, I gleaned all of this from various cooking shows.



Incidentally, it's wise to position the fingers of your non-knife hand, the one holding the apple, so that the knuckles face the knife rather than the finger ends. I have done it wrong in this photo, but I'm careful.

Another tip from cooking shows: use a paper towel, piece of plastic, bowl or something else for the scraps. Then you can dump it all later - preferably into your composter.



It's a lot faster than running to the wastebasket with every handful of scraps.