Preparing Tomatoes for Tabbouleh

"AMY STAGGS: Hi. My name is Amy Staggs, and on behalf of Expert Village, here is my recipe for tabbouleh. Now the next step in preparing your tabbouleh is going to be cutting up the tomatoes. You want to make sure that you have nice, ripe, plump tomatoes, but not overly ripe. You don't want them juicing everywhere and creating kind of a sludge. So, first, I'm going to take out the center part and you can actually kind of get rid of the seeds because those, again, add kind of a like a juicy sludge that you don't necessarily have to have for tabbouleh. You just want the tomato part. Push that aside. And this adds a beautiful color and crispness to the tabbouleh salad as well. Now, you're going to want to a total of about 1 to 1-1/2 cups of tomatoes. I would check and see if the people that you're preparing the tabbouleh for really like tomatoes. This is an easy way to throw in a really healthful additive. Tomatoes are packed with lycopene so the more that you can add, the better. And it's totally okay if you end up throwing in some seeds, those will just kind of confetti the salad but, again, I like to try to core them out because they do add kind of a juicy sludginess to the salad. They can keep the tabbouleh from keeping as long in the fridge if it ends up being too wet for too long. And tomatoes are the step number three in preparing the tabbouleh."