Giada De Laurentiis' Easy Tomato Cutting Hack Is So Genius (No Knife Needed)

Leave it to Giada De Laurentiis to casually break out a pair of scissors in the middle of a recipe video and blow everyone's mind. In a short clip posted to her brand Giadzy's Facebook account, she simply snips up some tomatoes as they cook, right in the pan, no cutting board, no knife, and no mess involved. And it's actually way more clever than it looks because tomatoes in a can are all you need to make a simple homemade tomato sauce, and this method will allow you to break them up as they cook down, sparing you the mess of tomato juice on your counter. Plus, another bonus is that you get to control the texture, finding your own perfect balance between chunky and smooth, in whatever way you and your family you like it.

Giada claims it's tradition, and she's sort of right there. Other home cooks, of Italian-descent and otherwise, have shared that they have the same trick where they use kitchen shears to chop whole canned tomatoes directly in the pot instead of crushing them by hand or cutting them on a board. There are even instances where people do the chopping directly in the tomato can, not the pan, before adding it in. It's one of those clever kitchen moves that just makes sense.

Whole canned tomatoes are already peeled, packed in juice, and often softened through processing, so they are basically halfway to being a sauce when you pick them up at the store. From there, the heat does the rest of the work, softening them further until they can be sliced apart with minimal resistance, and scissors are a pretty perfect tool to do that with. No funny angles trying to fit a knife into the pan, simply snip-snip-snip and move onto the next step of your recipe.

There are many good reasons to buy whole canned tomatoes and one is that they tend to contain fewer additives than the pre-chopped ones. So if you were curious about how chefs choose high quality canned tomatoes, the options with less additives are generally the better choice. Chefs usually look at two things when buying cans of tomatoes: Where the tomatoes are from and what's inside — they want them to be Italian and they want a short ingredient list, ideally just tomatoes, juice, and perhaps a pinch of salt. Once you've got the right can of tomatoes, the scissor method is the ultimate lazy cook's trick; it involves less washing up and it's a little reminder that usually the simplest shortcuts end up being the smartest.