Find out the length of the zesting blade on grater-style zesters. Longer blades can grate or zest more in a single pass, but they can be unwieldy to use and take up more storage space. For home cooking, most folks only need three knives to get any job done: a chef knife, a serrated bread knife, and a paring knife.

Other citrus fruits like lemon, grapefruit, tangerine, and clementine can easily replace orange in a dish. Use the peel from these fruits to create zest, and use it in the exact proportion as the original. Using these fruit peels are the closest you can get to the orange zest flavor. Can you zest with a cheese grater?

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If you have other citrus fruit from the orange family, such as clementines, mandarins, or tangerines, the zest from any of these will be a very good substitute because the essential oils are pretty much the same. What is this? Does rolling an orange make it easier to peel? Box graters are great for zesting oranges. Box graters usually have 4 sides to them. You want the side with the smallest grating holes or you can also use the rough rasp side too. Both sides will give you a great orange zest. Pro-Tip: Don’t toss the leftover orange. Use it for juice instead! I love to have citrus zest on hand to brighten my dishes, so if I ever have an orange that I will discard the peel, I will zest it and store the zest to use over time! Now, examine the long ribbon-like peels, and scrape away any white pith that may have come away with the zest.

Zesting an orange with a knife is pretty simple. You just need to be careful. All you need to do is peel the outer part of the orange with a downward stroke of the knife. Make sure that you don’t peel too deep into the pith layer. Once you've removed a few orange peels, make sure that they’re pith-free. If there’s some pith still attached, even the tiniest bit, it’s best to trim it off with a paring knife. Once you have perfectly translucent orange peels, you can start chopping them as fine as you want. Orange Zest with a Knife How to Zest an Orange with a PeelerThe best way I feel to zest an orange or any citrus fruit for that matter is using a Microplane! This is a great kitchen gadget that makes zesting any citrus fruit easy! Its a great way to add a fresh citrus taste to whatever recipe to need a little zing added. What to use the orange zest for Using citrus zest enhances the flavor of whatever you are making. A lot of times when you use the juice from your citrus fruit the flavor gets dull when it is cooking. Adding the zest to your dish makes sure that the flavor you are trying to get stays in the dish. There is a metal plate in the middle with small sharp holes which slices the orange perfectly and consistently. You can find zesters with a range of different hole sizes. Although the holes on zesters are always smaller than those on cheese graters, some are extremely small whereas others are mid-sized. Of course, the smaller the hole, the finer the zest will be, so you'll need to think about how you like your zest. Some people like it as fine as possible, so it will blend into the dish seamlessly, while others prefer a bit more texture. If you simply can't decide, you may need to buy two zesters with different hole sizes to cover all your bases. Ease of cleaning