With more homemakers than ever bouncing between a career and cooking, even something as simple as prepping a salad can become a nightmarish scheduling dilemma. However, enterprising chefs have pioneered an easy way to reduce your dozens of plump cherry tomatoes into neat, individual sliced servings in a matter of seconds. Once you know this trick, you’ll never go back to cutting cherry tomatoes – or olives, or even grapes – individually ever again.

All this method requires is two small flat surfaces that can be used as impromptu presses, with a gap the size of the tomatoes in between them. While most people will have spare plastic lids of roughly the same size, you can also try medium-sized plates, saucers, or even some models of sandwich presses and grills. Using objects with flat surfaces but also small rims around the edges is ideal.

Once you’ve chosen your two surface objects, load one of them with as many cherry tomatoes as will fit into a single layer without stacking. They should be pressed tightly against one another with limited space for rolling or shifting. Press your second surface on top, and then grab your favorite vegetable knife – serrated is recommended.

Place enough pressure with the palm of your free hand flat on the top surface layer to keep your cherry tomatoes in place, while at the same time cutting through the entire layer with your knife. As long as your knife is sharp enough, it should saw through the entire bunch of tomatoes in one go.

Note that there is a risk in this otherwise incredibly time-saving method of cutting all your fruits and veggies at once. As always with simultaneous cutting processes, differing sizes in the cut items can result in uneven cuts and aesthetics. If you have any tomatoes too small to remain stable under the pressure of your hand, remove them and cut them individually. Likewise, cherry tomatoes that are large enough to impact the height of your two press surfaces should be taken out, so as to not interfere with the cutting line.