Your quick tip for your next tomato-peeling project

There are times when you want to slip those skins off your juicy red garden tomatoes:

• When you’re adding chopped fresh tomato to a cooked dish where you do not want to see bits of tomato skin floating around at serving time. After all your hard work, this can look pretty tacky.
• When someone in the family has problems digesting those skins.
• When that special salad will look much more stunning with peeled tomatoes. Vibrant colors are more available to shine after the peels are gone.
• When you are freezing tomato cubes to use in cooked dishes later in the year. No floating skins allowed, right?

Quick Tip to Make Peeling Faster

Blanching is the usual way for peeling a tomato. Drop the tomato into boiling water for a minute or two. Retrieve the tomato and drop into cold water. The skin will usually crack. Then you peel.

To speed up the cracking and make the peeling much faster, make a small x in the blossom end of the tomato using a sharp knife. Having the x cut in the tomato shortens the amount of time the tomato needs to be in the boiling water, thereby leaving the tomato less “cooked”. The peel also slips off much, much more easily.

Heirloom Tomatoes May Not Need to be Blanched

Some of the heirloom tomatoes peel readily without blanching. Try this when the tomato is really ripe. Pineapple tomato and green zebras are two that cooperate beautifully.

I have not found a hybrid tomato yet that peels like this. Easy peeling seems to be bred out in favor of other characteristics like higher yields or longer shelf life.