Here you have one big bunch of Collard Greens in mid Chiffonade. It’s a breeze!
CHIFFONADE
This French chopping technique allows you to effortlessly turn leafy greens into pretty and appetizing little ribbons, hence the name Chiffonade, which literally means “little ribbons”.
Simply stack your greens – big or small – and roll them tightly into a tube. Slice at an angle into thin strips. Voilà! There you have it: Chiffonade.
JULIENNE
Another French technique, this one produces little vegetable matchsticks. Slice off the rounded edges of the veggie to produce a flat surface on all sides. Next slice to roughly ⅛ x ⅛ and 1 to 2 inches in length (3 mm x 3 mm x 3 to 5 cm).
NO TEARS DICED ONION
This technique produces a uniformly diced onion in seconds and, usually, with little to no tears.
Cut off the top of the onion, be sure to leave the bottom of the onion intact (the part with the dried up grass-like roots). Make an incision along the length of the onion deep enough to penetrate the outer most layer to aid with easily peeling off the skin.
Now you have a peeled onion with top removed. Sit the onion on it’s bottom and make 4 slices from top to bottom in one direction and then in the perpendicular direction. Make sure your incisions are just deep enough not to cut through the bottom, so that the onion stays together as one piece (mostly).
Hold the onion together tightly as you lay it on its side to be sliced. When you reach nearly the bottom and can’t make uniform slices any more, start to rotate the onion and chop off the remainder as you go. Once you get into practice, this should take no more than a 30 seconds – which is generally not quite long enough to bring me to tears!
MINCING
This is a very simple technique that allows you to quickly reduce garlic, ginger and other herbs into fine pieces. This produces a different effect than using a “garlic crusher” as the juices and fibers are intact. I frequently pile up all the herbs of a dish and just mince away all at once. Save time where you can!
Using a large chef knife, start by roughly chopping up the garlic, ginger, turmeric or other herb to make it more manageable. Once you have chunks that don’t slip away from the blade, start rocking the knife blade over the herbs back and forth, continuously scraping the herbs back into a tight pile, while holding the tip of your knife down with one hand over the top of the blade. Repeat until finely minced.
