Step by step: Peeling fresh tomatoes to make a sauce
Peeling fresh tomatoes can seem like a big deal but there’s a tip that makes it easy.
Skin tomatoes and stone fruits the same way
Have you ever tried to pull the skin off a tomato or a peach or plum? It’s nearly impossible. If you try to trim the skin off with a knife you can lose a lot of the meaty part that you want to use. Well using this simple tip gets those skins off easily.
Timeless cooking tips
Sometimes you find that there is a simple technique that makes an almost impossible task an easy one. Not just in cooking, but lots of things. One simple tip can bring you from frustration to accomplishment. You just need to know what that simple technique is.
That’s the story of peeling tomatoes. There is one simple and easy way to get the skins off so your tomatoes are recipe ready in no time.
Use plum tomatoes if you have a choice
If you are buying tomatoes to make a fresh sauce, plum tomatoes are the best pick. Some plum tomatoes are the Roma variety and they will usually be sold as Roma tomatoes. All Roma tomatoes are plum tomatoes, but not all plum tomatoes are Roma. It doesn’t matter what variety of plum tomato you use. Plum tomatoes are best for sauces because they have more “meat” and less seeds than regular round eating tomatoes.
If you have some round eating tomatoes that you need to use up and you want to make a sauce with them get the skins off the same way you would a plum tomato. After you have removed the skin it is a good idea to open the tomato up and remove some of the seeds and the “gel” that is around them. Regular eating tomatoes are more watery than plum tomatoes and removing the “guts” from them will help reduce that excess water and eliminate a lot of seeds too.
Wash your plum tomatoes
We are going to be blanching the tomatoes in boiling water, so why should they be washed first? Have you read our post on washing fruits and vegetables Wash Before You Eat ? It’s a lighthearted look at why you should always wash your produce and wipe it dry before you cook them or eat them raw. It’s not a lighthearted subject though.
By the time a piece of produce is put out for sale at your grocery store, it has been grown in dirt and manure, sprayed with fertilizers, pesticides and sometimes wax. Then they are handled by a lot of humans that don’t often work in sanitary conditions. The produce is picked, packed, shipped, unpacked and finally makes it to your grocery store shelves. All along the way it has played host to a lot of germs and bacteria that are alive and growing. Even if you are buying things that were grown locally, your piece of produce has been exposed to all of that. If you don’t wash the outside of your produce before you cook with it, whatever was crawling around on the outside is going to be part of your meal.
In this case we will be cutting into the tomato before we put it in boiling water. Those little buggers are going to crawl in through the spaces. Even if we kill the bacteria in the boiling water, chemicals don’t boil away. They will melt into the water and the meat of the tomato.
Here’s the good news. To get rid of all this crud all you need to do is rinse it all down the drain and then wipe with a clean cloth or paper towel. It’s well worth the extra couple of minutes.
Here’s my bowl full of washed plum tomatoes.
Core and slit them with a paring knife
Cut the core out of the tomato. The core is not deep and we don’t need to get all of it. We are just cutting out the toughest part of the core which will be about 1/2 inch deep or less.
At the bottom of the tomato we are going to cut an “X” with our paring knife. You don’t need to make a deep cut, you only need to pierce the skin.
The tomato on the right has the core cut out. See how small the core was. It is lying there in front of the tomato.
The tomato next to it on the left has had an X cut on the bottom. Don’t cut into the flesh, you just need to cut skin deep.
All our tomatoes have been scored with an X on the bottom and the cores have been cut out with a paring knife. There’s a small pile of cores on the right side of the board between some of the tomatoes.
Getting ready to blanch
Blanching is putting a fruit or vegetable in boiling water for a very short period of time. There are many reasons to blanch one of which is skinning a tomato.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Have a bowl close by so you can scoop the tomatoes into the bowl when the skins start splitting. You can use a slotted spoon to scoop the tomatoes out or a spider spoon with the woven metal basket.
Put the tomatoes in the boiling water to blanch
Here are my tomatoes in boiling water.
I am not cooking the tomatoes. The only reason for blanching is to pop the skin open. That will only take a minute. Literally.
When the skins start to split scoop them into the bowl
In most instances after you blanch you plunge the vegetable or fruit into ice water to stop the cooking. That is called “shocking”. That’s really not necessary if you are skinning tomatoes to make a sauce. We are going to be cooking with them anyway. It’s okay for them to stay hot in the bowl for a couple of minutes more.
You can peel your tomatoes when they are cool enough to handle, or if you want to leave them in the bowl for a while until you are ready to start your sauce that is okay too.
Here are my blanched tomatoes. See how the skins have split open? Some of the skins are wrinkled and are already pulling away from the meat.
The skins will easily slide off the tomatoes
Once the tomatoes have cooled enough to handle the skins will slide right off. Now you have a bowl of beautiful peeled tomatoes to use in your recipe.
As the peeled tomatoes rest, they will seep a little juice. Save the juice to use in your sauce.
Here is our bowl of peeled plum tomatoes.
The skins are in the bowl in the upper right corner. They literally slide right off.
Save any juice that seeps from the tomatoes into the bowl to use in your sauce.
Crush them by hand
To make your peeled plum tomatoes into a sauce, first crush them by hand like you would if you were using canned whole tomatoes.
Here are our peeled plum tomatoes crushed by hand and ready to use.
Making a simple tomato sauce
This is a simple tomato and basil sauce made from fresh peeled tomatoes. Looks good doesn’t it?
Peeling tomatoes is not always necessary
You can make a great fresh tomato sauce by just cutting up your tomatoes and letting them cook down in a pan or skillet. Most of the skins will come off the tomatoes while you are cooking them down. If you are putting another ingredient in the sauce that has some substance of it’s own, like another chopped vegetable or ground meat, you will never know those skins are there. If you are making a sauce that doesn’t have any other primary ingredients you will see some skins in the sauce. You can just spoon them out as you are stirring if you don’t want them. I don’t mind the skins in the sauce so I don’t bother hunting them down to scoop them out.
Peel or don’t peel, it’s all up to you. Make the most of ripe red tomatoes while they are in season. ENJOY!
Peeling Fresh Tomatoes
Ingredients
- 14 plum tomatoes
Instructions
Prepare the tomatoes
- Wash the tomatoes, then remove the core from the stem end of the tomato and slash an X on the bottom.
Cooking Instructions
- Place the tomatoes in boiling water for 1 -2 minutes until the skins start to split.
- Scoop the tomatoes into a bowl and let them cool.
- Remove the skins and put the peeled tomatoes in a bowl to catch any juice that seeps out. Keep the juice to add to the sauce.