What Are the Different Types of Graters Used For?

A box grater is the most common type, with a different task on each of its four sides. The coarse side is used for Kashar cheese, carrots, zucchini, and potatoes; its thick shreds hold their shape in a dish and do not fall apart when melted. The fine side grinds hard cheeses into a powder for sprinkling over pasta. One side is usually a slicing blade that cuts watery vegetables such as cucumbers and radishes into thin sheets—a knife makes this thickness difficult and time-consuming to achieve. Flat handheld graters have only one surface and take up less space than a box grater, but their main advantage is that they can be used directly over a plate.

A microplane-style grater is a long, flat grater covered with thousands of tiny razor-sharp teeth. Because it cuts rather than mashes ingredients, it produces a very different result: it removes lemon and orange zest without reaching the white pith, grates garlic and ginger almost to a paste, and turns hard cheese into fine, snow-like shreds. That fine texture is useful but calls for care: the same weight of cheese takes up much more volume when grated on this kind of grater, so measure the amount in grams, not by volume.

Grating direction and pressure directly affect the result. Push the ingredient downward in one direction; moving it back and forth can dull the teeth and crush the ingredient, releasing its juices. Soft cheese is less likely to crumble or stick to the grater if it is chilled in the freezer for half an hour first. Drain the liquid released by juicy vegetables separately. Use a finger guard or a holder for the last piece of food; the final three or four centimeters of a grater are where kitchen cuts happen most often. Stabilize the grater by pressing it vertically on a flat surface or angling it into a wide bowl; holding it suspended in the air can make it slip and work unevenly.

Care is simple, but often neglected. Wash the grater right after use; dried cheese and vegetable residue can harden like stone between the holes and then become impossible to remove. A brush works better than the abrasive side of a sponge and will not shred the sponge. Graters gradually become dull in the dishwasher; a hand-washed grater stays sharp much longer. Test for dullness by running it over paper, not with a finger: if it does not cut the paper, it will no longer cut ingredients effectively either.