8 useful tips for cutting vegetables

Lots of ways exist to cut vegetables. You can carefully slice and dice just as soon-to-be chefs are taught at culinary school, or you can use a few hacks that will make your prep job not only easier but much quicker, too. Admit it: There are few people who actually love all that time standing at the counter prepping for dinner.

Truthfully, even though they have the best knife skills, many chefs also use these tips and tricks. After all, they don't have a lot of time to be preparing the next course, either. Learn these eight cutting and chopping hacks and start using things around your home to help take prep time to just mere minutes.

Items such as cherry tomatoes and grapes can be a real drag to slice in half when doing them one by one, but there's an easy hack that will let you cut a group of these with just one slice.

Turn a plate upside-down on a countertop, so the flat side is on top. Place the tomatoes or grapes on the plate and place another plate on top, this time making sure the bottom of the plate sits on top of the fruit or vegetables. You should have clear access to the vegetable or fruit you're cutting through an opening between the plates. Place your hand on the top plate and press slightly to keep things from moving. Slide the knife through the opening and keep slicing until it comes through the other side. Voila! A bunch of tomatoes sliced in just 10 seconds!

Cauliflower can be one of those vegetables that's tricky to separate. The stalk isn't good for much, but the florets can take so much time to individually cut off that stalk. Instead, put the knife down and get a clean dish towel.

Place the dish towel on the counter and put the head of cauliflower in the center. Pull the four corners of the dish towel together so the cauliflower is wrapped inside. Turn the towel so the stalk portion is on the bottom and bang it firmly against a counter about 10 times. The force will break the stalk from the florets, leaving you with only the part you need.

Hair picks are good for more than just combing out unruly curls; they can also work as a cutting tool. To use them in this way you must first make sure you're using a pick that has stainless steel teeth and that it is very clean. This trick is so useful, it may just be best to get a new one that goes in your kitchen instead of the bathroom.

For cutting things such as cucumbers, just place the pick into the item and slice through the pick's teeth. For items that tend to roll around, such as onions, cut both ends off the onion and peel as usual. Stand up the onion on one of the flat ends you just cut and insert the pick into it. Slice through the teeth and get perfectly uniform slices.

Butternut squash is delicious to eat but can be a real pain to peel and slice. To do it, first chop off both ends and use a vegetable peeler to remove the tough outer skin. (Doing this with a knife is a recipe for disaster and will likely end with you cutting yourself.) Cut the squash in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Lay the squash on a cutting board cut-side down to use a flat surface. Chop and dice as necessary.

Like anything that has an awkward shape or is likely to roll around while you try to chop it, it's best to always find a flat surface and then chop. It's much safer than waging a battle to first keep your vegetable still and trying to chop it.

There is little that's better at the end of summer than fresh corn. When corn on the cob doesn't work for the menu, however, it can be difficult to get kernels off an ear. To do this, invest in a bundt pan, even if you don't bake.

Bundt pans are those weird-looking pans that have a deep well around the center with a hollow cone rising up out of the middle. Place the thin end of corn into that hollow cone and use a sharp knife to slice down the ear of corn, starting at the top and working toward the cone. Not only will this trick keep your corn steady, it will also collect kernels in the bottom of the pan.

6. Swap a knife for a pizza cutter
One of the reasons so few people love the job of prepping meals is because it takes so long. And when you're talking about standing over the counter slowly chopping things into a small dice, there's really no way around this.

Instead, swap out a chef's knife for a pizza cutter and cut the time in half (or even more). This works really well for things such as celery. Place the celery onto a cutting board with the pizza cutter in front. Keep the blade of the pizza cutter on the cutting board and move it up, through the vegetable and back down again. Keep the blade on the cutting board and keep moving along the vegetable until all of it is sliced. This also works very well with herbs because you can use the pizza cutter to cut and zip through all those veggies.

Although you can't use scissors for very thick vegetables such as raw carrots, there are a lot of smaller vegetables that can be cut quite efficiently with them. There's no easier way to cut through green onions than just snipping, and even leaves of lettuce can be easily cut with scissors instead of a knife. Many retailers sell scissors for cutting specific vegetables, but if you don't want to invest in one, any pair of heavy-duty kitchen scissors will do.

There are so many times you have to peel a vegetable before you can use it, as the case is with carrots, eggplant and sometimes even zucchini. Instead of putting down the peeler and picking up a knife, just keep peeling. You'll get thin ribbon strips that are not only beautiful but also make prep a breeze!