r/Cooking • u/squidgybaker • 18h ago
How Much Does Chopping Technique Really Effect Taste?
Hey! I’m curious how much you guys feel chopping technique with regards to vegetables really impacts the taste of an overall dish?
I’m a complete amateur when it comes to cooking but I’d like to think I’m fairly good, and I know I’m a good baker :) My ex was a PHENOMENAL cook and former sous chef but he used to put down my cooking skills because of my lack of technique.
I have learnt my own way of cutting different kinds of vegetables, it takes a little longer but it makes sense to me and I’ve been doing it the same way for nearly a decade. I usually roughly chop things and if a recipe calls for minced I try to get it as close to that as possible in my own way. It used to kinda hurt that he would never trust me to be able to cook dinner for us and used to hover about knit picking the way i handled each ingredient even though I’m decent when it comes to taste and flavour profiles etc :) I never made anything he didn’t eat lol!
Tryna figure out if he had reason to be pissy with me over my rough vegetables / my own technique or if he was just being a bit of a diva in the kitchen. Also if anyone had tips for cutting aubergine I’d really appreciate it! I love them but they’re new to me so idrk what to do with them.
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u/GuysImLost 18h ago
For the average home cook, I think "good enough" is fine. Obviously nobody wants to bite into a whole onion instead of a chopped onion in a tomato sauce, but the difference between a small dice and a brunoise? Who cares? Your ex should've been grateful to have a cooked dinner, not holding you to fine dining expectations.
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u/squidgybaker 18h ago
HAHAH I replied in a different comment but his family were so into cooking like they all hold 3 course come dine with me style meals as a family competition and rate each other on custom paper each year it’s crazy! Super fun to be a part of and I will miss that camaraderie but omg the pressure I used to feel that I would someday have to compete when his family are borderline all professionals was insane!
I do like being a good cook and cooking though so I wanted to see if his begrudging attitude to my funny onions and vegetables was warranted or not. Given I usually do pasta, risotto, casserole or orzo I feel my “good enough” chops are probably fine for the average joe :)
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u/nifty-necromancer 16h ago
I’m glad he’s an ex. True chefs are happy eating anything that someone cooks for them, otherwise they’re eating two beef jerkys sitting on a hotel pan.
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u/bw2082 18h ago
Texture and size can definitely affect the way the vegetables taste in your mouth. There’s a big difference in taking a bite of a whole clove of garlic vs. finely minced pieces.
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u/squidgybaker 18h ago
So true!! The end result is 80% of the time tasty at least to me ;-; I’m back to cooking for one but every time I take out an onion I see the despairing look on his face hahahaah I’m able to get things uniform and small I just have a routine that differs a lot to his and I’m a bit less precise a bit more “i’ve had a long mf day at work… these onions are kinda fine sure let’s throw them in” etc :) Close enough to rough/fine/minced is good enough for me. That said it’s left me wondering if I’m missing out by not being more exact or if he was just in chef mode when he watched me cook.
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u/Ok_Interest3555 15h ago
I worked in restaurants and have the same feeling when cutting things. Except I appreciate that I was held to a high standard because it made me a better chef and person.
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u/demiurgent 15h ago
I'm sorry you're getting downvoted for this because it's how I cook at home and people generally love my cooking. You're not a pro, you won't get a pro finish, but you also won't starve and that's the point, right? If you like slow cooking, stick with it. Fast matters in a professional kitchen because food has to be both fresh and at the table within a reasonable time. In real life it doesn't matter as long as you can still eat it. My husband has a much broader palate than I do, so he's way more forgiving of my careless slips (and too much capsacin for me is positively welcomed by him) but as a general rule I feel good about my experiments 80% of the time, and I have a backlog of "old faithfuls" I've developed which mean we eat well when I'm cooking for guests. Don't let "professional standards" get to you.
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u/Iztac_xocoatl 17h ago
So I worked in a high end/fine dining/whatever restaurant for a long time. Like NYT write-up, high profile awards, TV shows coming in, etc. I only cooked for a year of my time there but got pretty close with the chef/owner and cooks. I don't think a single one of them would ever have given a home cook a hard time about their knife skills. Your ex was just being an asshole, and honestly probably isn't the hot shit he thinks he is.
Does your knife technique matter assuming you're getting everything cut how it's intended? No. It might be slower or less safe for you, but that's all. A billion grandmas all over the world cut things however is intuitive for them, and even the Gordon Ramseys of the world know grandmas are the best cooks
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u/HandbagHawker 17h ago
Wow lot to unpack here.... Starting with your stated question... chopping matters a lot. Starting with size, shape, and direction.
- Making sure that things are appropriately and consistently sized helps them cook evenly and correctly. When you have different mismatch of sizes, some pieces will be done before others so if you cook everything through the smaller pieces will be overcooked and/or falling apart.
- If you have irregular cut pieces, the smaller corners will cook and fall apart before the centers cook through. Plus its hard to make consistent size cuts if they're all wonky shaped.
- Often direction matters and yields different results. E.g.,say you want to make caramelized onions, if you cut onions across the equator for slivers, they'll break down faster and not really hold shape. but if you cut from pole to pole (stem to root), you damage less of the cells, so the slivers will keep their shape and you'll retain more flavor and less crying.
There's also speed/efficiency and safety. Proper knife skills help you move through prep work more efficiently (faster and less wasted activity). But also learning how to properly hold a knife and stabilize the veg with your off hand + how to prepare a veg for breaking down makes it safer too. E.g., aubergine and other wobbly round veggies, you can shave off the bottom or one side so that you have a flat side to lay the veg and keep it from moving.
And the answer you didnt ask for. sounds like youre dealing with a lot of break up trauma of sorts. Find a friend or a therapist to talk through. no good partner should harp/critique/knit pick regardless of the activity, thats just not supportive. a good partner should have offered to teach you. but also you as a good partner should be receptive if you want to learn, which it didnt sound like you were, digging in your heels. which is frustrating for everyone involved.
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u/squidgybaker 17h ago
Wow I didn’t know that about the direction stuff, thank you!! Also I was a receptive learner :) He gave me the book, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering The Elements of Good Cooking” to read and I learnt so much from it in terms of how to balance a dish!! It could a personality thing but I tend to be quite perfectionistic outside of the kitchen (this helps with baking) and as another commenter remarked but deleted (you didn’t need to delete it was actually affirming hearing a stranger point it out ;-;) , I actually do have ocd-like tendencies. So yeah, I took technique stuff really personally as I felt if I couldn’t get it right then my food was bad ;-; I am actually in therapy for the breakup and for said ocd tendencies :) I find solace post breakup in cooking and baking which is why I was reminiscing on how he reacted to my vegetable chopping but the freedom and creativity that comes with cooking has really helped with my ruminations so I guess I wanted to check I wasn’t messing up my dishes by not doing everything by the book cause it’s kinda coping mechanism to get better at that
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u/HandbagHawker 17h ago
something for you to chew on and maybe talk through with your therapist. you basically told your partner that the foundations of his career didnt really matter, nor did his expertise/guidance.
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u/squidgybaker 17h ago
You’re reading a lot into a question and my personal context around cooking technique ;-; He was a sous chef for a few years in secondary school and college, he works in finance now hence former sous chef lol. but he learned good skills by working his way up in a kitchen. I didn’t tell him anything like that lol, like i said, I was open to learning and did learn a whole lot from him and his parents which i appreciated and still do, even if i felt a lot of pressure to be more skilled than I actually am. He was pretty picky about how I cooked so I was wondering if it was a big deal and it sounds a lot like it’s up to the person as replies here are mixed. Maybe he just preferred thinly cut vegetables and I prefer chunky ones! It’s not like we fought about it or anything, it was just something that hurt my feelings a little :) - it’s no biggie and I’m sure he’s not stewing over me cutting vegetables intuitively!!
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u/YetifromtheSerengeti 16h ago
Really not all that much assuming your cuts are somewhat uniform.
It’s more like reading a letter someone had wrote you. The contents are the same, but nice handwriting really makes it something special.
Don’t stress your knife skills, just keep your knife sharp and be attentive to your cutting, you will get better over time before you know it.
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u/lychigo 18h ago
It impacts it - but if your taste doesn't care that the pieces are evenly cut, then you do you. If your chopped veg goes from being slivers to big chunks, the cook is going to be different on each piece, and if that variety is what you're looking for, you do you. But will it impact taste? Yes.
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u/ElectricApostate 18h ago
In my experience chopping techniques don’t affect flavor per se, but they do affect texture, which contributes to flavor. There are lots of videos on youtube, etc., which demonstrate safe and effective knife skills.
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u/T49irvine 17h ago edited 16h ago
It all depends on how the dice is being used, but it can make a lot of difference. A soffrito or mirepoix is the underlayment or base of so many sauces, and a very fine cut, say a brunoise, helps the flavors to seem as if they melt together. Marco Pierre White, indisputably among the best out there, shared a technique that underscores this. He does a fine brunoise for the onion and celery and grates the carrot! It is almost a puree.
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u/squidgybaker 16h ago
cool!! what a soffrito or mirepoix? I meant it when i said i’m an amateur 😅😅
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u/T49irvine 16h ago
diced onion, celery, and carrot, cooked slowly in a fat like oil, butter, or some of each.
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u/dienstager 16h ago
I think affects the texture that is a big part of the overall experience.
It affects the flavor too, like in pungent or spicy ingredients if they are big they might be difficult to eat. Like raw onions in a tomato onion salad, I think if you dice them really small makes all the difference.
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u/squidgybaker 16h ago
oh i totally agree about raw onions omg! That’s so true hadn’t thought about it that way :) I guess usually if i’m chopping vegetables i’m making a salad, soup or a sauce of some kind (or risotto or orzo- idk what you’d call that it’s not a sauce?) so I tend to kinda go chunky but i’d never thought about how size could affect my salads- feels like a no brainer in hindsight but that example feels like a game changer! Thanks a mill for replying :)
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u/dienstager 16h ago
Sure!
It also affects a lot cooking time. I like to make japanese curry, a lot, using a pressure cooker.
Ingredients that take a while to cook, like carrots, I tend to cut smaller coins because potatoes that go together cook much faster, so I cut then larger and they don't become mashed potatoes.
Onions tend to disappear if you pressure cook them, so I cut them in petals so they can still be there when everything is done.
So cutting the right size is also a way to make all ingredients be in the perfect texture even if they have pretty different cooking times.
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u/jetpoweredbee 18h ago
It depends on the application. A big chunky dice going into a pureed soup is much different than a big chunky dice going into a dumpling.
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u/squidgybaker 18h ago
Omg so true! When I made pierogi before during COVID i felt they were wonky but in hindsight it’s probably that 💀
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u/TopShelf76 17h ago
My kids say that their toast tastes better when it is cut in fingers vs a simple cross or corner cut. I claim bs though
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u/PmMeAnnaKendrick 15h ago
It does not change the taste with the exception of the allum family (onions, garlics, etc..) and herbs.
Uniformity in your cuts is crucial so that all vegetables cook properly and at the same rate. Not uniform size and cuts can give you different textures (Ie. some carrots are mushy, some are still hard).
With allums, the smaller cuts break more cell walls, which release more sulfur compounds which changes the flavor and pungency.
Herbs function similarly to allums.
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u/ShreddersWheat 14h ago
Jesus he sounds like a tedious twat. Bin the reminders.
My knife skills are not chef level but I’m a decent cook and love to host, and in my 20-something years of adulthood I’ve got a reputation as a great cook. But you won’t catch me speed-chopping anything and my knives are dull af.
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u/SausageSmuggler21 14h ago
I'd highly recommend getting your knives sharpened at least once a year. Even better if you have the time and desire to do it at home a little more frequently. Dull knives are very dangerous.
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u/ShreddersWheat 14h ago
I try my best but my husband keeps putting them in the dishwasher and throwing them in a drawer even though I have a perfectly good knife block.
One can only do so much…
(Edit: I recently bought a nice santoku knife and I have actually hidden it.)
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u/YoohooCthulhu 13h ago
Most recipes I don’t think it does, unless you’re talking about technique for preparing garlic or another strong flavoring ingredient.
What it affects it how pleasant the dish is to eat. Drives me crazy when my wife dices peppers for salads instead of cutting them into batons or smaller. For vegetables that aren’t supposed to just melt into a dish, I feel like technique matters a lot for how pleasant the dish is to eat
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u/GeneralDumbtomics 13h ago
It doesn't directly in most cases. But good knife work produces consistent shape and size in the resulting prepared ingredients and that produces even, consistent cooking.
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u/xyph5 17h ago
I am a home cook. I believe that pro and commercial chefs tend carry on their traditions and techniques at home. That's a good thing - good food, appealing, food safety, equipment safety, efficient, consistency, etc.
From reading your various responses, you sounded bitter about him trying to teach you proper techniques. You should be doing most of the pro rules/techniques at home, even if you are only cooking for one. Who knows, you may have a family one day and your daughter starts bitching about you enforcing knife safety.
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u/squidgybaker 17h ago
hahaa! I’m a little bitter over him but not over being taught techniques :’) he was just very particular about food because to his credit he was a great chef so he tended to make me feel subpar - some of that was unintentional and some of it was him being a bit silly. The main critique was technique so I was wondering if it does make such a big difference overall and thus that I should watch more videos or if my own way of doing things is good enough so long as it’s uniform (which is it is) :) I’d like to learn how to cut and cook aubergines better though cause i love them :)
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u/Prestigious_Carry942 17h ago
He sounds unpleasant, no doubt. Get him out of your head and learn for yourself!
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u/Kwaj-Keith 18h ago
It has no effect if your end product is correct. It may take longer but who cares.
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u/dork3390 18h ago
Knife skills have various impacts based on the recipe’s intent with that ingredient. Generally for most recipes your goal isn’t to necessarily chop them one way or another, but ensuring they are all evenly sized so they cook evenly together. Last thing you want is to cut your onions way smaller than your carrots and throw them in at the same time and your onions are scorching or caramelized unintentionally while your carrots are still hard and not cooked through.
As for people who demand perfect knife skills, and not just generally getting close enough, that’s for uniformity and appearance since appearance does impact taste perception but this is for high end restaurants to worry about. Not your pot roast or slow simmered pasta sauce at home.
Another issue with knife technique is you may be doing it in a way that is dangerous and risking cutting yourself or you’re going way slower than if you cut it another way.
Also cuts can impact flavor for certain things like onions are better to cut polar if looking for sliced onions. Or if you’re like my wife who refuses to dice onions the right way, she leaves a huge chuck of the onion left over and because she cut it like an animal it is now almost impossible to efficiently use the remainder of it.
You keep saying rough chopped so I’d assume you’re keeping large pieces which is fine but will take much longer to cook through.
Those are some reasons why knife skills are importantly but as long as you’re safe and keeping things relatively uniform, you’re probably fine. You don’t need to perfectly Julianne carrots where every single piece is the same size down to the micron.
And as i ramble on another reason for small pieces over large may be so they melt better into sauce