Do I need a strawberry huller?

A strawberry huller is a little tool that is designed to remove the hull – the leafy top and white-ish center “plug” – of a strawberry before you eat it. Unless you’re eating berries by hand and tossing away the hulls one-by-one (or dipping them in chocolate and need a “handle”), you’re going to want to remove the hulls before using the berries. They make a better presentation when they’re hulled because the berries are absolutely ready to eat. Once hulled, they are also ready to be chopped up and added to anything from cereal to bread pudding.

Strawberry hullers come in various designs, from little scoops to dedicated coring tools, like the Oxo Good Grips Strawberry Huller. Since strawberries also come in various designs – from tiny to huge – hullers don’t always make the job faster than, say, using a paring knife to pop the hull out. This is because a dedicated huller can require repeated attempts to get out a large hull, and can remove too much of the flesh from a small berry, requiring you to use a paring knife anyway for those fruits. The OXO, for instance, works well for medium-sized berries, but not for very large or very small berries. The only hullers that seem to work all the time are those that look like tiny paring knives or sharp spoons and will fit a variety of fruits, although if you already have a small knife, they’re not entirely necessary.