8 Kitchen Tips & Simple Solutions

1. Core the tomato. Working from pole to pole, use the tines of a fork to pierce the skin gently along one side of the tomato.
2. Using the tine marks as guides, cut the tomato into even slices.

When a recipe calls for crushing whole tomatoes by hand, things can get messy. For a neat solution, pour the tomatoes and their juice into a bowl. Submerge the tomatoes under the juice and then use your hands to crush them, one at a time, keeping the juices contained.

Sweet and juicy crushed fresh tomatoes are perfect for a quick sauce when in season. This method delivers all the pulp while leaving the skins behind. Slice the tomatoes across their equators and grate the cut side of each tomato half on the large holes of a box grater until all the flesh has been pressed through and only the skin remains.

Stuffed tomatoes have the tendency to slip and slide all over the pan when they’re being transferred in and out of the oven. Here are two resourceful solutions.
A. Use a muffin tin to prevent wobbling. Place tomato halves in the cups of a muffin tin sprayed with vegetable oil spray. Top the tomatoes with stuffing, then bake.
B. Slice the blossom end off of each tomato and arrange, cut side down, in a baking dish. Then place the stuffed tomatoes on the blossom-end slices to keep them in place during baking.

While some cooks enjoy the zen of chopping vegetables for stir-fries or pizza toppings, others consider the task a necessary evil—time-consuming and tedious. For those in the latter camp, here are the magic words: salad bar. Many supermarkets feature salad bars where cooks can pick out a wide variety of ingredients, cleaned and chopped, in just the quantities they need.

If you grow lots of fresh vegetables in your home garden, try using body- scrubbing/loofah gloves from the dollar store to clean carrots, leeks, potatoes, and any other sturdy root vegetables. Used in a bowl of water, these gloves make quick work of scrubbing the vegetables clean.

Part of the routine for blanching vegetables is to stop the cooking process by transferring the vegetables from boiling water into a bath of ice water, which is called “shocking.” To shock when you have no ice in the freezer, try using frozen ice packs—the type used to chill foods in a cooler—in place of the ice cubes.