A lot of recipes call for peeled, chopped tomatoes, and there’s no good reason why you should resort to canned goods in order to get this ingredient right. And once you know how to do it well, it’ll be easy to integrate into any cooking routine that calls for it, and you’ll never again leave out that step that ensures your dinner guests gat nasty bits of tomato skin stuck in their teeth when they’re eating 😛

Here’s the utterly foolproof method for peeling a tomato…

Directions:

1. Boil a pot of water – as much or as little as you need to just barely cover the number of tomatoes you’re planning to peel
2. Core your tomatoes by sliding your knife around the core about half and inch to an inch deep (depending on how big the tomato is, thus how deep the core goes), and slide out the core – it should be cone-shaped – this way you’ll lose very little of your tomato
3. Pop your tomatoes into your boiling water, and wait for the skins to loosen – you’ll see them go wrinkly and split – this should take 5 minutes or less
4. Take off the heat, and gently lift out your tomatoes with a slotted spoon, leaving them on a plate to cool (you could plunge them into ice water if you need to work fast)
5. Once your tomatoes are cool enough to handle, you can simply slide the skins off gently, et voila – you’re done!
6. Chop your tomatoes as desired, and use in cooking right away, or freeze for use at a later date (great if you’ve got a glut of tomatoes and want to use them up over time in a variety of different dishes)