Tomatoes are prone to falling apart as you cut them, even if you’re only slicing them to put into a sandwich. If you're making a soup, stew, or sauce with fresh tomatoes and don't want them bursting all over your cooking space, you use a box grater to get all that delicious tomato flavor with only a fraction of the fuss or frustration.

While this technique was originally conceived as a way to maximize the taste of fresh tomatoes, it also has the advantage of being easy and clean. Simply place a box grater inside a bowl, cut off a thin slice from the bottom of a whole tomato, then use the stem end as a handle to grate the whole tomato down into pulp.

Using this technique, the skin should naturally spread out and protect your hand from getting scraped, while the bowl catches the extra juices that separate from the pulp. The result is a smooth and uniform tomato pulp, plus an easy cleanup where all you have to do is wash the grater and toss the skin in the trash.