Lye Peeling of Products for Canning:

Instructions for Use by Community, School and Institutional Canneries

Community, school, and institutional canneries must keep waste to a minimum in preparing foods for canning or other forms of processing. You will want, therefore, to consider methods which are efficient and adaptable to your processing operation. The factors recognized as desirable in the method adopted for peeling a particular commodity are:

1. The method must be economical.
2. It must save hand labor.
3. It must save time.
4. It should not be hazardous*
5. It should adapt itself to equipment which might be constructed locally.
6. It must be simple.

For removing the skins of peaches, carrots, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, and Kieffer pears, lye peeling meets all the above requirements except one. It is hazardous. But with proper precaution, it presents no greater hazard than the steam retorts or the high-temperature scalding baths commonly used for blanching commodities to be processed. The hazards of lye peeling can be reduced to a minimum through correct installation of equipment and through education concerning its use.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Marketing Service

National Agricultural Library

1956