Rachael Ray Shared A Cherry Tomato Hack That'll Save Time (And Your Fingers)

Rachael Ray, whose first television show "30 Minute Meals" began airing in 2001, is all about cutting down on time spent in the kitchen. Needless to say, she's collected her fair share of time-saving tricks over the years, like pouring boiling water over dried beans. One of the most memorable tips involves the notoriously difficult task of cutting cherry tomatoes. Not only do they spurt juice everywhere, but slicing them one at a time can be extremely tedious — and even dangerous given their small surface area and need to be held in place. Ray's go-to move is essentially to sandwich them between two flat objects, which prevents having to put your fingers (and free time) at risk. Better yet, it finally lets you put all those deli lids you've collected in your container drawer to good use.

"[Take a] handful of cherry tomatoes, two deli lids, one quick slice straight across, and BOOM! You've got perfectly sliced tomatoes," the cook wrote on Instagram. In the post, she also shared multiple video clips of her demonstrating what she calls "one of [her] all-time favorite hacks" through the years. It really is the perfect way to stabilize and slice a bunch of cherry tomatoes at once — though your knife has to be pretty sharp to do it in one swift swipe.

The genius move might not be news to longtime fans of Rachael Ray, but social media users still applauded it. "I remember the first time seeing this on your show... I still cut tomatoes and grapes this way every time," wrote one commenter on Ray's Instagram post. A second person remarked that they teach Ray's trick to others.

Various culinary content creators have shared this hack over the years, but plenty of folks still credit Ray for popularizing it. As another fan stated on the star's post, "You were the first person to show this on TV! Now everybody acts like they dreamed it up." Indeed, on a 2022 TikTok post by chef Joshua Weissman (a.k.a. @flakeysalt) showcasing the tip, someone commented, "I remember seeing this on [Rachael] Ray while waiting in a doctor's office back in the early 2000s."

As it happens, cherry tomatoes aren't the only things the beloved television personality has a cutting hack for. Between her two-step onion chopping trick and easy method for cubing avocados, she's single-handedly changed the way many of us wield a knife in the kitchen. After all, as Ray once told Mashed, "It behooves everyone, no matter what age you are or what you do for a living, to learn some very basic and smart skills in the kitchen."