How to dice a tomato (without the watery seedy stuff)

Some of you may already know how to do this, but it changed my life (and my pico de gallo) back in college, so I thought I'd share it with you all just in case.

When I first learned this trick, I was participating in a chili cook-off with my friend Emily, and we wanted to add diced tomatoes to our chili--but we didn't know how to leave all out the watery seedy stuff*. So we did what all people do when they don't know how to do something: we searched for it on youtube. It was a while ago, but I'm pretty sure this is the original video.

*definitely the scientific term

Feel free to watch that, but here are some step-by-step photos to walk you through it.

 

Supplies: you'll need a tomato and a knife. and a cutting board. your counter tops will thank you.

 

Step one: use the point of the knife to wedge out the stem of the tomato.

 

Step two: cut around the inner "seed ball" of the tomato by cutting a C shape from the top of the de-stemmed tomato to the bottom. Do that a few times all the way around the tomato. If you're me, you'll do a hack-job of it and still have some watery seedy stuff, so just use your thumb to scoop it out.

 

 Step three: throw away the "seed ball" and stem and chop up the remaining parts. Voila, you have beautiful, watery-seedy-stuff-free diced tomatoes.

Happy chopping!