Recipe: Peeled tomatoes

Most people know the basic way to peel a tomato - blanch the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds, then transfer to ice water, then peel.  It works, no doubt, but somewhere along the line, somebody took the time to really think about the process and what you are trying to achieve, and adjusted the technique accordingly.  

 In the industry, we go through a lot of tomato concasse - basically skinless dice tomatoes.   Ideally, it's a raw product, and by adjusting the way we do it, means that the flesh of the tomato doesn't even get that 30 seconds of cooking from the usual way.  The two biggest changes are to ice the tomatoes first, then break that 30 seconds down to 3 or 4 stages.  Incidentally, if you are going to stew the tomatoes anyway, you can keep blanching tomatoes as normal, this method is trying to keep them as raw as possible.

You will need:

tomatoes

a large pot of boiling water (you don't want the boiling to stop as you add the tomatoes)

two ice baths (lots of ice)

Method:

 - as normal, score the bottom of the tomatoes with an "X"

 - plunge the tomatoes in the first ice bath for five minutes

 - get the water really boiling

 - drop the tomatoes into the boiling water, but stop adding if the boiling slows down

 - after 5 -10 seconds, pull the tomatoes out and plunge into the second ice bath

 - repeat with the tomatoes that were left behind

 - switch positions of the ice baths

 - repeat the blanching 3 or 4 times, but the tomatoes won't need more than a total of 30 seconds cooking

 - after the last blanch, leave the tomatoes in the ice bath a few minutes - this will help loosen the skin

 - peel the tomatoes as normal