DIY Life

A few of my favorite summer recipes, such as Strawberry Pie, require a large sum of whole, cleaned and hulled strawberries. However, yanking those green tops off can be time consuming, not to mention all the sweat meat lost when we rush. Some stores sell a contraption called a "strawberry huller" but they're clunky and often waste too much of the strawberry.

I'm a big fan of using what you have, but some older remedies work no better than the strawberry hullers. One such technique is the potato peeler. You stab the strawberry in at the top next to the stem, rotate the strawberry so the peeler cuts around the stem and pop it out with a flick of the wrist. That works great with larger strawberries, but what about those petite sweats?

The best berry-hulling tool is actually located in your cake decorating kit. The variety of star-shaped frosting cones is perfect for the varying sizes of strawberries. Use the larger star on over-sized strawberries and the small star on homegrown beauties. You're sure to have a huller the perfect size for your needs. Plus, the cones allow you to dig as shallow or as deep as you need, thus preventing the loss of berry meat. To use, place the frosting cone over the stem and push into the strawberry, then twist and pull up at an angle (a.k.a. just not straight up).

As an added bonus to this tool, there's no need to clean out the cone between berries. Just move on to the next berry and the stem from the previous berry is pushed up and out of the open-ended side of the cone. Icing on the cake, the cone is dishwasher safe.