Strawberry huller. © Denzil Green / 2006
A strawberry huller is a small kitchen tool used to remove leaves and the hull from the top of a strawberry. The hull is the tough white-ish centre “plug” at the top that the leaves grow out of.
Using one can not only save the waste of cutting off too much of the top bit off the berry, but it can also be faster and safer when having to do a lot of berries, than trying to rush with a paring knife.
The classic strawberry huller is a piece of folded metal, with the fold forming the handle, and sharp rounded grabbers at the ends. You pinch it closed around the leaves. It acts like a pair of tweezers that pulls leaves out, while digging the hull out at the same time. With some cheaper versions, though, these are not sharp enough to get in cleanly, and you end up in a tug of war.
Some newer models of hullers have you press a sharp-ended hollow tube into the fruit on top of the hull, twist, then pull it out, and release to eject the hull and leaves. With these, though, some very large berries with large hulls may require two passes.
Some people say they’ve tried them all and they’re just too fiddly to use; that they don’t care if they lose a bit of fruit at the top using a paring knife.
Cooking Tips
Remember to wash berries first, so that you are not pressing any surface contamination into the fruit.
Strawberry huller. © CooksInfo / 2020