The skin of a vegetable is good for you, or so they say. Some don’t even need this kind of literal eat-your-vegetables marketing—potato skins, which add texture and crisp up nicely, certainly have a proper following. Tomato skins, not so much.
Some skin is fine on a raw tomato, and even acceptable on roasted ones, but I can think of other occasions when I’d rather those chewy, shriveled shreds go elsewhere, including when making soups or sauces. But skinning tomatoes, which typically requires blanching, can be time-consuming and messy work. But then I tried an alternate method: a little trick with a grater that promised to take the skin off with ease. And it actually worked.
Though the practice of grating tomatoes has been around for a while, for some reason I never tried it until recently, when I was reminded of it by a post on chef Sara Moulton’s Instagram. I figured with all the late summer tomatoes rolling around in my kitchen, it was a good time to see if the hack was worth the hype. I sliced a ripe tomato in half, pressed it into the large holes on my grater, and began scrubbing away. After that first tomato, I was convinced. I think I’m entering my grated tomato era.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann
Using this method, the flavorful gel, seeds, and pulp come out the other side of the grater into a bowl, and the skin stays behind. Initially, and depending on the type of tomato, you’ll encounter resistance, and you might even feel the grater tearing the skin of the tomato. Hang in there—you just need to get things started. I had the most success when I twisted the tomato half back and forth while pressing. The liquid and seed gel will go through first, and then you can start using the skin as leverage to push more of the loose tomato pulp through until there’s nothing left on top of the grater but the skin of half a tomato.
Effectively, my tomato came through skinned and chopped, and I didn’t risk my fingertips around a sharp blade.
When to use grated tomatoes
This tomato skinning method is ideal for pan con tomate, or tomato toast, a popular Spanish snack. It’s a sensational and simple nosh (recipe below) that’s best for highlighting flavorful, ripe tomatoes. Basically, it’s what you should be doing right now.
But beyond that, and beyond summer, you can use this trick to de-skin a heap of tomatoes for fresh or cooked tomato sauce, and as the temperature continues to drop, tomato soup, or tomato risotto. Essentially, you can use it for any dish where the tomatoes will cook down and out into the sauce, and where you’d rather not fish out scraggly bits of skin.
Easy Pan Con Tomate recipe
Ingredients:
1. Skin the tomatoes by cutting them in half and pressing the pulp through a grater into a bowl. Discarded the skin.
2. Toast the bread. Additionally, I like to char the edges with my gas stove’s flame. Scrub the clove of garlic across the top of the toasted bread. You won’t really leave bits, but the oils and aroma will stay behind on the bread.
3. Drizzle or brush a bit of olive oil onto the bread. Scoop the tomato seeds and pulp onto the slices of bread. Finish them with more olive oil and a sprinkle of flaky salt.
