Experts' Experts: World's Best Apple Corer

There's nothing better than a baked apple, nor is it difficult to make one.

Even I could — mos def.

Probably.

But you've got to prepare your pomme prior to putting it in the oven.

The diligent, dutiful folks at Cook's Illustrated have done all the heavy coring for us to come up with a recommendation for the very best version of this tool.

Here's what the magazine's "Equipment Corner" feature in the latest (September/October 2007) issue had to say about this important component of any good cook's batterie de cuisine.

Apple Corers

A good apple corer should be a fast, easy tool for eliminating the core neatly. We found one that worked well.

Rather than slicing an apple into quarters and then removing the core and seeds from each piece, we'd rather reach for an apple corer, which does the job in one fell swoop. We tested five models and found out the task wasn't always so cut and dried. Narrow blade diameters — less than 3/4 inch — on the Henckels Twin Cuisine Apple Corer ($9.95) and Messermeister Serrated Apple Corer ($6.95) struggled to break through the firmer flesh on Granny Smith apples and forced us to poke and prod the core from the sharp metal teeth. The relatively stubby — 3-1/2 inches or less — metal tubes on the Henckels corer and the Leifheit Hinged Apple Corer ($11.99) came up short when asked to plow through large apples. We had much better results with the razor-sharp Rösle Fruit Corer ($21) and the OXO Good Grips Corer ($6.50). Testers preferred the more comfortable grip on the OXO model.


HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

OXO Good Grips Corer
Price: $6.50
Source: www.amazon.com
Comments: Though this tool’s wide mouth occasionally failed to tightly grip the loosened core for extraction, it made up for this drawback with its trademark “good grip” and its sharp teeth.


RECOMMENDED:

Rösle Fruit Corer
Price: $19
Source: www.surlatable.com
Comments: If the stainless steel looped handle didn’t slide around in our apple-juiced hands, this tool’s concentration of prickly teeth would have made it the top corer.


RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS:

Leifheit Hinged Apple Corer
Price: $11.99
Source: www.cooking.com
Comments: No complaints here about messy core removal. This corer’s clever split-apart mechanism worked well, except for its tendency to wobble open while inside the apple.


NOT RECOMMENDED:

Messermeister Serrated Apple Corer
Price: $6.95
Source: www.cutleryandmore.com
Comments: This tool sported a nice nonslip handle, but its blade was a hair too narrow.

Henckels Twin Cuisine Apple Corer
Price: $9.95
Source: www.cutleryandmore.com
Comments: Too small all around, this corer came up short in diameter and length.

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OXO's corer (top) is $6.50 here.