Tomato frustration

[CherryRed]

Hello all!

Just a quick question about preparing tomatoes. I just spent far longer than expected simply skinning and slicing some (please note the exceptional alliterative quality of those last 5 words. . . LOL).

Getting the skin off was easy. I blanched them in hot water and it simply peeled off. I did notice a difference in the fresh, home-grown ones that my boyfriend's neighbor gave to us and the ones we bought to come up with enough for my recipe. The skin on the home-grown ones slid off much more easily after blanching. Any idea why? Suggestions to make the store-bought ones that easy?

Then I moved on to the actual slicing. Nightmare! Whenever I thought I'd removed all the seeds I could, about a million more would pop up out of nowhere. If anyone knows of a relatively quick/simple way to remove as many seeds as possible, please share! I'd really appreciate it and I'm sure there are others here who will as well.

I'm off to finish putting together my dish - will post the recipe here if it comes out as good as it sounds.

Thanks in advance!

[Andy M.]

The store bought tomatoes are of a different breed than the home grown ones. Some breeds of tomato skin more easily.

After skinning the tomatos, slice them in half horizontally (so the stem is on one half and the blossom end is on the other half). Hold a half in your hand and make a quick downward shaking motion over the sink while squeezing the tomato half. The aqueezing and shaking will force most of the seeds and gel out of the tomato half. Repeat with the other half.

Also, there's no reason why you couldn't deseed the tomato after slicing. Just takes a little longer.

[CherryRed]

That's what I had been doing, de-seeding after I sliced. It took forever! Thanks for the advice about squeezing them :)