To Help Prevent Sandwiches From Getting Too Soggy, Don't Skip This Tomato Step

Few ingredients can add as much fresh pep to all manner of sandwiches as tomatoes. Whether they're stealing the show with little more than mayo in the best tomato sandwich of your life, harmonizing in a trio for the perfect BLT, or jazzing up a classic, no-frills grilled cheese made with the best bread, these beautiful botanicals can really bring the razzle dazzle. If, of course, you treat them right with a nice sprinkling of texture-perfecting salt.

Improperly prepared tomatoes can have the opposite effect on your otherwise promising handheld meals. Merely slice and stack, and the slick disks are liable to slide around unmanageably and even soak your carefully selected bread and fillings, diluting any actually intended condiments in the process. This is because great, ripe tomatoes are so wonderfully naturally juicy. But that juice is better kept for your bloody Marys, so you'll want to allocate a little extra time to drawing out that otherwise valuable liquid. And you can do so with a little sprinkling of the salt that you probably already have in your pantry.

Moisture is as frequently the enemy of cooking as it is crucial for success. For every protein you're trying to keep plump with fat, there's a limp pile of greens that needs a twirl through our favorite single-purpose kitchen tool, the salad spinner. Sandwich tomatoes need the same sort of droplet-wicking treatment. And all you need to do to get them carb safe is to cut the tomatoes to your desired thickness (a ¼ to a ½ inch will do), shower the slices with kosher salt on both sides, arrange them on a paper towel-lined plate, and rest for around 10 minutes. The salt will attract the tomato water to the slices' surface, which you can blot away with another paper towel or two.

The salt is primarily a tool in this application, but it will also season your tomatoes a little to a lot. If you are adding them to something like a BLT, you'll want to shake and brush off as much of the mineral as possible, due to the bacon's own sodium. This is not as great of a concern for something like those aforementioned tomato sandwiches, unless you're using an unusually salty mayonnaise. A bit of salt in this application will similarly improve your tomato pie, bruschetta, and plenty of salads.