Home › Home & Kitchen › Kitchen & Dining › Kitchen Utensils & Gadgets › Peelers How to Peel Ginger Published: July 9, 2026 · Updated: July 9, 2026
The easiest way is to scrape the thin skin off with the edge of a teaspoon, which glides around the knobbly bumps and wastes almost none of the flesh. A vegetable peeler or paring knife handles the flat parts, and you can skip peeling altogether for young thin-skinned ginger or when you're grating it or straining it out of a stock.
Recommended Scrape the skin with a spoon's edge — a peeler for flat parts, and skip peeling when grating or straining — Ginger's skin is thin but its shape is lumpy, so a rigid peeler or knife cuts off good flesh trying to follow the bumps, while the edge of a spoon flexes around them and takes off only the papery skin. Hold the ginger in one hand and drag the bowl of a teaspoon firmly along the surface, working into the crooks between knobs; the skin peels away in strips and you keep nearly all the root. For the broad, flat faces a swivel peeler or a paring knife is quicker, so many people combine the two. You don't actually need to peel at all when the skin is young and smooth, or when the ginger is going to be finely grated (the skin disappears), or when you'll fish out slices from a soup, tea, or braise and discard them. If you do peel, do it just before use and freeze any spare — frozen ginger grates easily and the skin matters even less.
