The Tomato Hack You Can Do With Your Salad Spinner

Salad spinners might seem like a superfluous kitchen tool if you haven't really thought through just all of the ways you can use one. If you're creative enough or do some homework, though, you'll find there are quite a few hacks that call for a salad spinner — one of which involves a fast way to de-seed tomatoes (via Mental Floss).

Tomato seeds can have a bitter taste, so a lot of people like to remove them. It's often a huge hassle to do it by hand, though. That's where the salad spinner comes in. For both fresh and canned tomatoes, you can place the fruit in a salad spinner after you've poured off any juice. Press the button to give them a few good spins, then remove the tomatoes and use them in your cooking, free of seeds.

If you are making a sauce, you can press the tomatoes through a sieve to really make sure all of the seeds are out. Another trick to make sure the seeds are out of fresh tomatoes is to quarter and salt them well prior to giving them a spin. This will help draw out any extra juice that might be in the fruit before spinning.

Salad spinners are really great for removing the excess water in a lot of things — not just tomatoes and salad greens. You can use a salad spinner to remove the excess water from most vegetables and even some meats. Vegetables like zucchini, eggplant, and more do well in a salad spinner. As far as meat goes, chicken and fish work well in your salad spinner, too. Removing the water makes them drier and better suited for coating them in breading — just be sure to thoroughly clean your spinner if you're whipping around raw meat inside of it.

Another good use for this kitchen tool is when you're defrosting shrimp. Thawing frozen shrimp tends to be a watery mess, so the salad spinner is perfect for separating the thawing shrimp from the extra frozen watery bits (via Good Cook).

An added bonus is that you can drain and dry pasta after it's cooked for dishes like pasta salad. After you first drain the pasta in a colander, pour it into the spinner and give it a few turns. It will help pull any more water out.

Basically anything that needs to have excess water pulled out, try the salad spinner. It should be a pretty useful tool if you look beyond your salad greens, and it might find its way onto your countertop more often.