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Quality Without a Name

I like to cook. Especially using quality utensils.

I was making mashed potatoes and gravy to go with one of our favorite dishes: 40 cloves and a chicken.

I was peeling a pile of potatoes, ripping through the pile with my trusty peeler. I started thinking about just how nice it is to use a really good peeler.


It amazes me just how hard it is to find a good potato peeler. We've had a dozen of them over the years, and the one I keep using, the one that never wears out, gets dull, breaks... the only one I can use without being frustrated, is an old Ecko stainless steel peeler that we've had for well over twenty years. It's identical to the one we used to have at my parents' house when I was a snot-nosed kid, in '65. It probably cost a buck.

Every newer one we've tried takes too big a bite (wasting food), or clogs, or doesn't cut cleanly, or is hard to hold, or whatever. Even the simple ones that look like the one I have now invariably cut too deep. The newer ones aren't as well-made.

Needless to say, I've not found this simple and high-quality quality peeler for sale anywhere. I'm sure that simple, rugged, and highly functional potato peelers are a thing of the past. Who cooks these days, anyway?