I recently made salsa for the first time. A good batch of salsa requires fresh, ripe tomatoes. Tomatoes have to be peeled and prepared for use in salsa (and lots of other things, like if you were making your own base tomato sauce).
I used what is seemingly the most popular method and it involves boiling, cooling, and peeling. Here’s how I did it:
Preparing the tomatoes:
- You’ll need a large pot of boiling water and a large glass bowl of ice water. (Yes, use ice. No, really cold water is not enough)
- Remove the stems
- Cut a small X in the bottom of each tomato
- Add a few tomatoes at a time to the boiling water
- Boil for 30 seconds (no longer!)
- Carefully remove the tomatoes and place them in the ice water for up to 5 minutes
- Remove from ice water and peel the cooled tomatoes (the skins should be split and easy to slide off)