How to Peel and Seed a Tomato: The best, easiest method!

Tomato season is here and since my husband took over the garden this year, we are now getting about 10 ripe tomatoes a day off of just one plant! It’s hard to keep up with that, eating just sandwiches and salads! It’s time to get serious and make big batches of sauce and gumbo and oven-dried tomatoes. Tomato seeds and skins don’t break down during cooking. For that reason, many recipes for cooked tomato products call for seeding and peeling tomatoes. If you use canned tomatoes, this is already done. If you are canning and stewing your own fresh tomatoes, you may want to do this yourself.

Most chefs and “how-tos” will instruct you to score the top of the tomato, put it in a big pot of boiling water for about 1 minute to blanch it. Remove it from the pot. Then peel the tomato. After peeling, cut it in half and scrape out the seeds. I find this method pretty tedious and time-consuming. It takes up a lot of counter space, gets water all over the place, and heats the kitchen during the height of summer (aka tomato season) with all of that steam.

I developed an easier method at the restaurant that works great for peeling and seeding large batches of tomatoes without blanching them. Not only is it easier but you get some nice roasted flavors that enhance any dish you end up making with your tomatoes. This is how you do it:

Best Method for Peeling and Seeding Tomatoes

Step 1

Preheat your oven to 500 F.

Step 2

With a pairing knife, cut out where the stem attaches. Then cut the tomato in half. If the stem end is the North Pole, you want to cut along the equator.

Step 3

Oil a sheet pan (or multiple sheet pans). Place the tomato halves cut side down on the tray and slip the tray into the oven for about 10 minutes or until the skins loosen.

Step 4

Remove the trays from the oven. The skins will slip right off. Squeeze the tomato halves over the tray and the seeds will come right out. Stir the juices on the sheet pan to get up all the tasty browned bits and strain out the seeds. Reserve the liquid.

After Peeling and Seeding Your Tomatoes

Now that your tomatoes are peeled and seeded, they are ready to make into marinara sauce, tomato puree, gumbo, tomato soups, canned tomatoes, or any other recipe that calls for peeled and seeded tomatoes.

An Even Easier Method…..

Here’s a secret… You can actually skip peeling and seeding tomatoes most of the time. At home, I make tomato sauce with diced fresh tomatoes that I have not peeled or seeded. After it has simmered all day with aromatic vegetables and herbs I blend it up with my emersion blender (you could also pass it through a food mill). The flavor and texture are delicious and I didn’t go through the extra step of peeling, coring, and seeding. In fact, the flavor might be even better! This recipe at the Splendid Table for Classic Italian Tomato Sauce insists that you should never peel and seed tomatoes when making sauce because a lot of the tomatoes flavor is in the gel that surrounds the seeds. If you are making a pureed soup or sauce, you can skip peeling and seeding all together and no one will be the wiser.

If you are making a dish with cooked, diced tomatoes you will end up with pieces of skin floating around if you do not peel them. Do you care about that? When I’m cooking for my husband and my kids, I don’t care about that and neither do they. So unless I’m really bored that day (lol, that never happens), I skip peeling and seeding the tomatoes.