Power Drills: Great For Apple Peeling

Unless you've been peeling your apples with a power drill this whole time, you've been doing it oh so very wrong. In what can only be described as pure genius, a restaurant employee, or rather, the owner of a family restaurant, has discovered a novel way of peeling apples — using a peeler and a power drill.

Before you turn away in fear or worse yet, in skepticism, let me explain. The man in said video, posted to YouTube on Monday, decides to utilize the rotating powers of a drill to his advantage. Whereas the traditional method of peeling an apple required you to move the apple in a circular motion by hand, a time consuming process, this brilliant innovator decided to speed up the process by sticking an apple on a drill, and simply holding a peeler against the apple as the drill spins away.

Because the apple is now attached to the drill, whenever the drill spins, the apple spins too, and let's face it, a power drill just moves faster than your hand does. And you thought you'd never use your drill again after putting up your curtains.

Not only is the process quick, it's also remarkably neat. Each peel comes away in one long, continuous piece, and just drops gracefully into an awaiting bucket. No more messy sink for you to clean up! Of course, a steady hand would probably be a big plus in such a process, but that comes with practice, right?

So how fast does this guy go? Well, over the course of 24 seconds, he manages to peel six apples. So at four seconds an apple (and remember, that includes the time is takes to put the apple on the drill and take the apple off the drill), that's certainly putting any traditional apple peeling method to shame.

While some of the viewer's videos were horrified that the apple peel (the most nutritious part of the fruit!) would be going to waste, the video's poster quickly addressed their concerns, writing,

Just for clarity, the apples are used at our family restaurant in our apple baked goods and we give the apple peelings to a local ranch so they don’t go to waste.

Efficient and economical! What more can you ask for?

As much as we Americans would like to claim this idea completely for ourselves, it seems that the Dutch might have beaten this man to the trick. On March 30, another video emerged on YouTube that showed Jasper van Ramhorst of the Eetcafé de Gribus in the Netherlands employing the same method.

His technique, however, is a bit different. Whereas the more recent video shows the daredevil of a man more or less free-handing the whole process, the Dutch chef places the apple (attached to the drill, of course) on a table to provide some stability. This may also allow for a more even trimming of the apple skin, but really, who cares?

What we really care about, I assume, is speed. So who takes the cake in that sense? Dutch chef van Ramhorst manages to make it through five apples in 35 seconds, which means that his peeling speed stands at approximately 514 APH (apples per hour, that is). Our homegrown restaurant owner? Exactly 900 APH.

But regardless of who did it first or who did it fastest, it's a great idea. One that you'll probably try at home, even if you shouldn't.

Images: OnlyAMuffin's, Mas Pak/YouTube