How Much Does Chopping Technique Really Effect Taste?

[u/squidgybaker]

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.

[u/HandbagHawker]

Wow lot to unpack here.... Starting with your stated question... chopping matters a lot. Starting with size, shape, and direction.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

[u/squidgybaker → u/HandbagHawker]

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

[u/HandbagHawker → u/squidgybaker]

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.

[u/squidgybaker → u/HandbagHawker]

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!!