Tomatoes are a staple in practically every cuisine. They’re the base of marinara sauces, many curries, salsas, and more. They bring the T to a BLT sandwich. And the fruit is packed with nutritional benefits, such as vitamin A, C, and K, and even antioxidants. But when faced with them in your kitchen, you might wonder—how the heck do I prepare them?
We talked to Emily Hankey, produce butcher at Whole Foods, to find out how to handle cutting up a tomato. She stresses that for any kind of tomato you’re working with (whether they’re Roma, heirloom, beefsteak, you name it), use a very sharp blade. “Not serrated or anything, just a smooth, sharp blade,” she says. It’ll help you better cut through the firm-skinned outside and mushy inside without totally squishing the shape of the tomato.
There are a few ways to go about cutting a tomato, depending on what you want to do with it. If you just need thick slices, say for a caprese salad or a sandwich, Hankey says to simply slice off the top of the tomato (with that brown-green part that connects the tomato vine to the fruit itself). Then cut in slices from top to bottom of the tomato. Easy peasy.
If you’re dealing with smaller tomatoes like cherry or grape varieties, Hankey says to slice the tomatoes vertically, top down, and then quarter for smaller pieces. If this is too time-consuming for a large bunch of small tomatoes, try this hack from The Kitchn, where you press a bunch of tomatoes between two plates or lids and slice through all of them simultaneously.
But when it comes to dicing, that can be a little trickier. Here is Hankey’s step-by-step:
- Cut the tomato in half.
- Place the flat side of the tomato half face-down on your cutting board. Place your hand on top to keep a good grip.
- Using a sharp knife, make slices horizonally through the tomato, parallel to your cutting board. Don’t cut all the way through the tomato, Hankey says—you have to leave some space for you to grip.
- Make a series of downwards, vertical cuts through the tomato—similar to how you would prepare an onion for dicing.
- Chop down, across the tomato, to dice into small cubes.
