Ways to peel a clementine

I was chatting with some people the other day when we stumbled upon the conversation of peeling a clementine. I know, pretty exciting stuff. I wanted to show off how kooky / crazy I was, so I mentioned that I sometimes peel clementines with a chopstick. They didn’t believe me. So, this post is dedicated to some alternative ways of peeling a clementine.

I’m going to be rating each approach on 3 different categories: speed of peeling, cleanliness, difficulty of approach

1. Cutting the clementine like an orange

Speed: Fast

Cleanliness: Varies depending on where you cut

Difficulty: Easy

2. Peeling the clementine with a knife

Speed: Medium

Cleanliness: Clean, I peeled the whole fruit with the knife, but you can choose to peel with your hands after the initial cut

Difficulty: Easy to medium

3. Peeling a clementine with a chopstick

Speed: Medium

Cleanliness: Clean-ish, still peeling most of the fruit with your hands

Difficulty: Easy to medium

4. Peeling a clementine like normal

Speed: Medium to fast

Cleanliness: Depends. Usually, my nails get a bit dirty

Difficulty: Easy

5. Peeling a clementine with a spoon

Speed: Medium

Cleanliness: Clean-ish, still peeling most of the fruit with your hands

Difficulty: Easy to medium

Results

For me, using a utensil to start the initial peeling step is useful because it lets me keep my thumb slightly cleaner, and it doesn’t add very much time. For others, they don’t really care about their nails getting dirty, so peeling by hand is the preferred approach. I enjoyed the ease of cutting the clementine like an orange and may do it in the future as my preferred approach, assuming I have the utensils around.

Note: You can choose to use the utensil to peel the entire clementine instead of switching to your hands, but that adds a lot of time

Readers’ suggestions

6. Peeling a clementine with your teeth

Speed: Slow

Cleanliness: Clean, but the peel tastes bad

Difficulty: Medium