Mashed or other potatoes are easily one of the best sides at Thanksgiving or Easter, but peeling more than a few spuds at a time, bent over the sink, can be really, really hard on hands, wrists and backs. My mom would rope all four of us kids into helping, and we’d form an extremely reluctant and sour-faced little potato assembly line with our vegetable peelers and go through bags and bags of potatoes — that is, when she could get us to help at all.
We all pretty much hated Thanksgiving and other big holiday mornings until I discovered the Starfit Rotato Express and bought one for my parents’ house.
The Rotato is pretty much what it sounds like: a small appliance that peels potatoes by rotating them, in this case with a small blade that’s enclosed in plastic for safety. And let me tell you, you just don’t know joy until an electric peeler saves you and your siblings from hand-peeling dozens and dozens of pounds of potatoes on a holiday morning. Now, one person just plops a potato at a time on the Rotato, pushes a little button to see its peel come off in a thin, glorious ribbon, and then repeats the process. We’ve gone from resisting to helping to arguing over who gets to man the Rotato, and now we’re done peeling so, so much faster.
The great thing about this little kitchen gem is that you don’t need a large family like mine to find it handy; it’s great for people who have mobility issues, arthritis, or other challenges that make peeling potatoes difficult or uncomfortable, not to mention people who just like machines doing things for them, or just really hate peeling potatoes. In the video above, a TikTok reviewer who is legally blind recommends it to others like herself. Plus, real-life chefs love it, too.
It’s just plain fun to use, and de-skins a whole list of other fruits and veg as well, like pears, lemons, limes and apples. It now also comes in an updated model called the Rotato 2.0, but my family’s been using our Rotato since 2016 and it’s held up just fine. Despite the fact that some parts are plastic, it has been truly durable. Each machine comes with six replacement blades (more can be ordered separately), and you can power it via a wall outlet or with batteries. You just might wonder how you lived without it.