How to Dice Tomatoes

Diced tomatoes are great for salads, salsas and taco toppings

Dicing tomatoes is not an easy task. The seeds and juice in tomatoes can create a slippery surface while the skin can be resilient and cause your slices to look more like craters in the fruit. It is necessary to employ a certain set of skills and tools in order to achieve a precisely diced tomato.

Things You'll Need

• Fork
• Wooden cutting board
• Paring knife
• Knife sharpener

Instructions

1. Sharpen your knife. The best way to keep a tomato under control is to slice it with a very sharp knife that requires very little pressure to begin slicing.

2. Cut the tomato in half from the top to the bottom. This will give you a flat surface to work with.

3. 

   Lay one half of the tomato flat on the cutting board. You can hold it in place with a fork jabbed into the end farthest from you. If you are right-handed, hold the fork with your left hand. If you are left-handed, hold it with your right. This leaves your main hand free to cut.

4. Cut a series of long slices into the tomato from top to bottom. Do not let the slices spread out as you cut. The fork will help hold them in place.

5. Cut a series of shorter slices from one side of the tomato to the other. Do not let these slices--which now are beginning to form long rectangular pieces of tomato--spread apart.

6. Cut across the middle of the tomato half so that your knife blade is parallel with the cutting board. You can hold the tomato in place by pressing gently on the top of the half with your fingers bunched together. When you finally allow the pieces to spread, you will have diced half of your tomato into small, neat tomato cubes. Repeat the process to dice the other side.

Tips & Warnings

• This type of cutting requires you to keep your fingers very close to a sharp blade. Make sure you pay close attention to where you are cutting as you work to avoid injuring yourself.