dicing tomatoes

Another fixture of prepping for Latin Quarter was making salsa fresca.



I don't know how many portions that was, but 40 tomatoes went into it.



And by 40 tomatoes, I mean 40 tomatoes small-diced by hand. But you know, that's in addition to those 6 onions, 6 bunches of cilantro, 4 bunches of scallions, and 12 jalapeños all small-diced. Repetitive motion injury aside, this meant a lot of time meditating on how tomatoes could be diced better/faster.

So the one thing I hate about cutting tomatoes is that usually the skin is so tractionless that the knife experiences resistance trying to cut. So I wanted a dicing method that would sidestep cutting into skin. Several experimental methods later, I settled on this one.



First cut the sides of the tomato off so the tomato is one block (this is good practice for cutting cube-shapes out of any cylindrical-shapes, like a carrot for example).



Cut the block into slices (vertical cut) and then cubes (horizontal cut).



Take the tomato sides/ends and slice, then dice those.

And there you have it, the dicing tomato method that is almost all flesh and no skin. Now salsa fresca your way to happiness!