The Brilliant Hack for Slicing Cherry Tomatoes—It’ll Save You So Much Time

A smart food hack never goes out of style. Every few years, it makes its way across the internet again delighting home cooks.

Anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time combing social media and websites for recipes and cooking advice has probably seen this great trick for peeling a mango, this tip for grating ginger, and this lightbulb moment for using a tool you have in your kitchen for perfectly portioned, round cookies. These are genius tips that change the way you cook at home.

Here is one tried and true food hack that I saw making the rounds five or so years ago that I still use today: a brilliant way to slice a bunch of cherry or grape tomatoes in seconds. It's a trick I still rely on every summer.

This cooking shortcut actually works and comes in handy for the many ways to use cherry or grape tomatoes. You might love adding cherry tomatoes to salads for bursts of flavor, slow-roasting them in the oven for a jammy counterpart to toast, or blistering them in a skillet for a quick and flavorful pasta sauce. 

Cherry and grape tomatoes are an easy way to bring fresh, acidic flavor, as well as color and effortless elegance, to meat, poultry, or fish dishes, like these Baked Chicken Thighs with Cherry Tomatoes. They’re wonderful on their own, especially at the height of tomato season, picked fresh from the plant and still warm from the sun. Because they’re smaller and often sweet, they’re a great secret weapon for the rest of the year, when tomato season is out of view. 

How to Slice a Bunch of Cherry or Grape Tomatoes at Once

There’s no denying they’re an asset to any home cook, but there’s also no denying that slicing cherry tomatoes takes some time when cutting them one by one. Try this instead:

Take two flat surfaces, like the lids off two-quart containers or two small plates. Fill one lid or plate with as many cherry tomatoes as will fit. Then, place the other lid or plate on top of the tomatoes and hold it down firmly with one hand. It'll look like you have tomatoes sandwiched between two lids or plates.

With your other hand, use a serrated knife to slice between the lid or plates, gliding the blade through the batch of cherry tomatoes. Remove the top lid or plate to reveal evenly-sliced tomatoes after just one quick motion. 

Once you try this smart trick, you’ll find yourself tossing a pint of cherry or grape tomatoes into your shopping cart with abandon, whether or not you have a recipe in mind, because why not? They’ll be ready in an instant.