Tomato Tips

Peel, Seed, Freeze

Do you love juicy, ripe, round tomatoes? Here are some helpful tips to celebrate the taste of the season!

Peeling a Tomato

This is easy. Really. Here's what you do: stab a ripe tomato onto a fork, and immerse it in boiling water for 30 seconds. Let it cool briefly, then strip the skin off with a sharp paring knife. The tomato should practically peel itself. Try it.

Freezing Tomatoes

Yes. You can freeze tomatoes. And it's so simple that you'll wonder why you haven't been doing it for years. Just pack perfectly ripe tomatoes into plastic bags, seal them shut and toss them into the freezer. No blanching, no nothing. Then, when you want a tomato or two for a recipe, just remove as many as you need from the bag, run them under warm water, slip the skins off (they really will slip off) and voila. A peeled tomato. Because defrosted frozen tomatoes go mushy, however, use these only in cooking.

How to Seed a Tomato and Why

Sometimes a recipe will call for seeded tomatoes. Tomato seeds have a tendency to go bitter with cooking and leave your (otherwise perfect) sauce full of little crunchy bits. So - to remove them, simply cut the tomato in half crosswise (not through the stem end) and gently squeeze it over a bowl. Most of the seeds should ooze out, and the ones that don't are no big deal. That's it.

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