Finely diced vegetables. Pro chefs please give a home cook some wisdom.

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Nemo

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I'm interested in the techniques and dishes that chefs use finely diced veggies for. Mirepoix, soffrito, whatever else you call it. Which vegetables are useful? How finely do you dice them? Which knife techniques do you use? Is there a progression of veggies that works well? How do you cook them? What sort of flavours do you aim for? What sort of sort of dishes do you use them in?

Yes, I have my own answers to these Qns but I wanted to get a pro's take on it, as I suspect that I have the "nursery rhyme" version and have a lot to learn.

Thanks in advance for you wisdom.
 
It depends on how much you want the veggies to be prevalent in the final dish. Something cooked for a long time like a gumbo does not need the smallest dice possible as they will just disintegrate. Which may be what you want sometimes. Something like a meatloaf benefits from the smallest dice possible so that you don't have chunks of veggies speckled throughout. Either way you get the flavours of the veggie into the dish. I think salsa is a good example. Pico de gallo is chunky but you can take all the same ingredients and make it smooth in the blender. The chunks will give more of a pop in flavor while the blended version will be the same taste throughout. A lot of it comes down to personal preference in the end. This is the way I look at it when I've got veggies to dice.
 
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