How To Cut The Most Common Vegetables | Chef Jean-Pierre

well hello there friends finally that video i've been promising you for a long time how to chop and dice most of the vegetables we use on the channel underneath the video you'll see a link that says show more click on that link and you'll have a listing about fabric order of all the vegetables we chopped and diced today for you check it out if you want to do celery click on celery and you'll see how we chop and dice the celery if you cannot if you cannot click on the show more you can go to our website at chefjp.com or chef jean-pierre.com click on the vegetables and they will also be there listed i hope you enjoyed the video thanks for watching we look forward to seeing you again with another fantastic video in the next couple days asparagus number one try to buy big ones they test a lot better they're a lot easier to handle than the little skinny one those are difficult also when you buy an asparagus i want to show you this is a fresh asparagus this is an old asparagus this is one i bought today this is one about 10 days ago as you can see the bud is all open it's not fresh this is no good this is good how do we do it well first of all you want to peel them my friend take yourself a nice peeler and go gently from about three quarter on the top three quarter over the top and peel them very simple okay and then you see a lot of people tell you break the asparagus break the asparagus where do you break it you break it here you break it here you break it here you break it here where do you break it wherever you do that it breaks you don't need to break it all you need to do my friend is cut the bottom if you look look at the bottom i dried up it is right so you cut the bottom kind of like a flour and now you can rehydrate it easily okay whatever we do with this we can certainly poach it like that grill it like that oven roasted like that we can do some of the recipe or you can stir-fry and to stir-fry i like to cook it i put this in water cook it first put this at the end very simple that's for asparagus [Music] green beans now these vegetables probably doesn't need much of an introduction it's got to be the easiest vegetables in the world to cook friends i don't do much to them at all now most i do really is i cut the ends off but i leave this guy right here especially if i'm going to cook the whole thing i think they poach beautifully push them in boiling water then put up an ice water so they you keep the color nice and neat and then you saute them you can do all kind of cool things with them or you can cut them in little pieces like this just give them a little shape so they look kind of cool all right just make them give them a little bit of a shape and let me tell you friends let's make sure we cut the right hand they are delicious also in salad cut very small yeah very small very small very sweet caramel salad like that let me tell your friends they are delicious they are absolutely delicious and a nice surprise crunch in uh in in the salad otherwise push them all all you basically has to do is to make sure you clean the end and voila told you they need mushroom introduction green beans easiest vegetables in the world to cook bell peppers so many recipes with bell peppers so so many ways to handle it for friends um if you're a professional chef you're going to cut the the top off um at home you want to be comfortable you're going to go remember now your knife has to be super sharp with one of those if it's not you may want to get your kind of serrated knife to do it but you cut the top off now when i cut the top off i like to clean this up after this and and do a little more cleaning in there so what i do is i cut side of it very simple see very very simple side and i don't waste the end that of course i throw away and this you can take your berry knife and you can clean it now if you remove the core at the beginning then you don't have to do this but otherwise this is a way to handle it i sure like to remove all the seeds i also like to leave to remove the white membrane what i do i take the white membrane i go to the left or to the right of it and i cut straight and then i take my paring knife and then i'll remove it same deal here and then remove it so now if it's too much i remove the white membrane doesn't test very good friends you try it you see if you like it i don't like it so let's cut it in so many different ways we can cut the bell peppers one thing is for sure friends we always want to make sure we cut with the skin side down never up so sometimes you may need a big dice of bell pepper which means you do a big julienne then you take and you're cut in big dice i died very much you're going to ever use a bigger dice than this but you could in some recipes i hardly ever use them that big now we're going to do a medium dice that means we need to make a medium julienne now remember are we using a knife okay we're going to do a video on knife as well we have now a medium julienne then we take and we cut into a medium dice some people may think this is small this is actually a medium dice now we're gonna do a small dice and small dice means we're gonna get a smaller julienne take a smaller julienne and we're now going to cut it into a smaller dice this is probably for a salad or something you're not gonna cook this is the perfect small dice now without being too technical we can do a brunoise a brunoise is the thinnest dice you can possibly make and for the brunoise i like to have a very thin a bell pepper otherwise i can't cut so i remove a little bit of the white membrane you notice my knife is flat mega bromois that means we're going to make very small very thin julienna very very very small and very thin julienne you see where your finger hardly moves now we take this again it's always about the julienne before you make a dice you make a jewelry and you make a slice then you take your slice you take it into a julienne and you take your julienne and you make it into a dice and right here my friends we have ourselves what is called a bun and a bun one is something you put on top of a pasta on top of a pizza on top of a salad it's something it doesn't require to be cooking especially for a bell pepper certainly don't need it and here we have a friend we have a three not you over there there's one of them doesn't belong in there i'm gonna put it in here and now we have a three basic cut without getting too technical about the different size of it now you also see me sometime using a julienne of bell peppers in a recipe which means we're still removing the white membrane and now when you see some of the recipes that we do and you see a giuliana bell pepper then you'll know we'll first make a slice then we make a julienne and a julienne and we leave it sometime i find than the julienne you can certainly live it like this in a recipe if it's going to cook for a while or you can cut it in half more often than not i do that now every so often i may leave the julienne hole and i kind of give us all of the basic cut you can make with the bell peppers except this i don't throw it away i try not to throw anything away and i basically do the same thing now of course the fact that it is round it's not always easy but if i'm doing a stew or something i'm not really too concerned about the size of it to be exact and you may want to just roughly chop it you see and some in in a stew this would be perfectly fine you see perfectly fine in this two friends rough chop and here we have it we broke down the whole bell pepper it's just a few minutes and this my friend is an introduction to how to cut the perfect bell pepper bok choy this is actually a a baby bok choy sometimes they come really really big same principle right so what we do is uh first thing we want to do friends is we want to remove the leaves because they cook at a different speed than the um then the root end speed and then depends what it is you do with it what i do is i roll them and i chop them in rough chiffonade that's a wonderful way to do stir-fry with it okay but this guy right there or you can push them the same way you're going to do this first thing we do is we remove the roots removing the roots that releases them you see it releases them and as you get closer you do the same again you remove the root and it releases the leaves so now at this point friends you really really have to wash them you see they have a lot of sands in there so you watch them and then depends what it is you're going to do with it you cut them like this remember if you are going to do this this right there put them on top of each other makes it easy depends the size here remember now those are going to take longer to cook the rose so you put those in your stir-fry before you put those and that's how you handle bok choy broccoli wonderful look at those here's what i want to do when we do the broccoli friends we come we start with the trunk the trunk the stock of the broccoli and and we start climbing up and cleaning it up so what we do we'll remove what's in the bottom first we turn around we'll remove the floret and the florets are made with undeveloped flower buds and we clean the trunk the trunk the stock color the trunk and we clean it we continue cleaning you see look we continue cleaning as we turn around the first one comes we clean it that means we do not break we do not cut the floret unless we have to sometimes you may have to you see we clean it up we keep going we keep going you see we keep going and then we'll keep going and we may have right now a flow rate then it's perfectly fine okay so if it's too big then you can do the same again you see you can go in and do it again and do it again and do it again and then you want to clean it up and now you have yourself a sizable throw it you see so you don't want to cut it if you cut those uh and develop flower buds they're gonna be all over the place this is really what you want to eat if it's too big for you just keep going you see keep going and if you end up having a big one and you can't do anything about then you you're cleared up and you may have to cut it in half but this is all edible size right there now what do we do with this guy a lot of people throw that away let me tell you there's more flavor here friends than there is a nose guys okay so what do we do with this we make sure it is fairly clean fairly clean the last thing we want to do for certain we want to remove the root that's dry root right there we remove that and that goes in the garbage so far you have noticed i haven't i don't have much coffee this is from the other one i don't have much garbage at all now the idea friends is to peel this guy to peel it so you get a nice pillow and you go this way clean it up as much as you can and then you go the other way you see peel it the other way sometimes it's a little too hard let's clean this out of the way always nice to have a clean work surface friends and now we're going to take our knife and now we can cut this oh it's hard we can cut this and believe it or not my friends you'll enjoy eating this as much if not more than eating your floret what do we how do we cook this well of course we'll poach them in boiling water but we purchase this guy first and when this is almost done then you put this one at the last minute and this is how you handle broccoli brussels sprouts they're wonderful i know a lot of you don't like them but they're quite special so what do we do with them not much we have a um a root so we remove the roots and a cool way to eat and believe it or not friends is to remove the leaves from when you cut the roots it's easy to do you see cut the roots it's easy to do it you do it gently so you don't break them right and then when you're done with this layer you cut a little bit more and you can remove another layer and now those leaves are amazing at the end you purchase them you put them in boiling water and you put them in ice water wonderful way to do it these guys right there you can purchase them in boiling water and i like to put your sugar in there because sometimes they're very better and you can roast them you can pan fry them you can do a lot of things with it and if they're really really big what i like to do oh stay here you if they're really really big i cut them and then i squish them right in half easier to cook remove the outer layer like you would do for a regular cabbage and i find they cook a lot faster and they're wonderful to roast that way also all right this is brussels sprouts [Music] and that's about enough squash phenomenal they look strange don't they and you know they're difficult to cut so i'm going to show you how to do it this is perfect so um first thing we're going to do friends we got to peel them unless you want to roast them in the oven and what you do you take your knife you put a couple of holes in here like all the way through or a big fork and you pop it in the oven and you can cook it without cutting it but if you want some nice chunk then you can saute and caramelize for soups and and different dishes then you want to peel it and you want to cut it all right so let's do it so what we do we take a vegetable peeler you hold it tight tight tight and you just speed it you see and that's all you do friends okay now now then it's spilled let's clean up a bowl and let's cut it don't grab them when they're too big they're difficult to handle first thing we're going to do right now you got to be very strong now and you're going to cut the ends and you're going to cut both hands be very strong when you do this firm film firm firm frame then you're going to cut the bulb the bulb right there that's the bulb and you're going to cut it in half and you're going to take a spoon and you're going to clean the seeds and we're going to do the same thing here we're going to cut them in slices it's easier to manage if you cut them in slices all right now we're going to take a spoon and we're going to remove the seeds and when they're very fresh you really gotta go in there and dig friends you gotta really dig and now what we're gonna do we're going to cut in slices and we're going to take our slices and we're going to cut them in dices same deal with this cut them and if they're too big cut them in half and you got yourself beautiful dices you can roast them you can put them in soup you can put them in make some beautiful sauces with it you can do all kind of things and friends this is how you handle the butternut squash [Music] cabbage boy it looks impressive first thing i do you know no matter what i always remove the first layer or two because usually everybody has touched them they're dirty so i just remove them all right we got rid of those guys what i'm in here and then what i do is i take my paring knife and i remove a little bit of the core just a little bit of a core now this is dangerous so be careful friends okay if you're not used to handle a paring knife like that be very careful okay remove a little bit of it and then what we do friends now we have a a study surface we're going to cut it in half you got to really be strong when you do this hope you ate your weenies today all right so now we have a half of a uh a cauliflower a cauliflower yeah well we're gonna do a cabbage i just did a cauliflower so what we're gonna do now we're gonna cut it in half again friends but you gotta be strong boy i'll tell you what and now right there friends you see you have a this one is not too bad normally the heart goes all the way out there and what you want to do you want to remove it right there boom now you're ready to go at this point friends you can really easily shred it just like this be very simple now you can shred it all you want or what you could do my friend this is a easy way to do shredded cabbage you could also take your quarter and you want to again you can cut them in half again and you can actually bake it just like this you don't have to do nothing you can bake it just like this that's another fantastic way to to do the cabbage or you can shred it very thin for a stir-fry for a saute we're gonna put it in here and now be very careful this is the mandolin but the mandolin the mandolin will give you the thinnest possible cuts you see if you want to make a cold slow be careful now it's very difficult to use the god with those because they like they're not and what i do is i take it and i flip them on the other side you see be very careful be firm my friends when you do this and that's i hope you can see this this is another fantastic way of handling the cabbage at the end of the day cabbage is very simple or we shred it or we leave it in here and we bake it and that's about it so this friends is the way i handle cabbage [Music] carrots a lot of recipe with carrots so i peeled a few of them but i wanted to show you not that anybody needs to learn how to peel a carrot but i've seen so many professional cooks doing it the wrong way hold your potato your potatoes all your carrots uh by the root end and go straight easy all the way down but don't try to get it all the way there because what you're gonna do right and we got it so far what you gonna do you're gonna flip it on the other side and just finish it as easy as it is you would be surprised at how many people doing it wrong they try to do the whole carrots at once and then they peel a little bit of their fingers of course we're gonna remove the ends so many things we can do with the carrots so many recipes we can use for the carrots it's easier if you're gonna make dice if you're gonna make a julienne with the carrots it's easier if you get a big carrots they're not always easy to find but you take the big part of the cow if you're gonna dice it so what we're gonna do we cut and now we're gonna make some dice out of this and remember when you make a dice no different than the potatoes you want to make sure you get ready to decide you want to make sure that your carrots doesn't move so you cut so it's flat you get rid of the round part of the curds i don't throw this away i use it in stock so now what we're going to do friends we're going to cut slices that we can cut in julienne then we can cut in dice if you want to make a small dice then you got to cut a small slice you see all right now we got our slices we can take a slices and we can cut them in julienne sometimes you can do them when they're on top of each other sometimes you count and this is round we're going to leave it there so we're going to serve some perfect julienne we can leave them like that or we can cut them in dice and all we have to do to cut them in half you take about half of it and and you hold them together and you have yourself some little dice you can certainly make them smaller in brunoise but it's not often then you need a brunoise of carrots the size of the slice determine the size of your dice if you're going to make dice curse we can certainly use them in so many different ways you probably heard of the roll cut and the roll cut is when you roll your carrots you cut it in a bias then you roll it and then you get this kind of cut you get this kind of cut so if you want a roll you can roll it or you get this kind of cut which is kind of cool if you're making a um a stew or thing or you can take your knife and go down and you still get the roll cut you see you still get the same raw cut the size of your one cut is based on how long you're going to cook the carrots if you have a recipe like a stew then it's gonna a chicken stew that is only gonna cook for uh a few minutes like uh 45 minutes you could this way if you have beef two it's going to cook for two and a half three hours you may want to make them bigger than that then you can have fun with a carrots also you can take a big side and and you can take one of those uh a channel knife and you can cut channels out of it i've done that in a few recipes you guys have probably seen it some of you that are watching the channel on a regular basis and you cut little channels again great material for stock i always clean my cutting board and makes it easier and then we'll go up and down and we got carrots then looks kind of cool really simple all right we'll make it simple now bigger the carrots easier it is for you to make those beautiful little uh wheels or whatever you want to call it and that's friend is a quick little introduction to cut carrots now if you want to cut them straight of course there's nothing wrong with giving the carrots an angle and you get yourself also an angled cut which is pretty simple easier to do it in a roll cut it looks kind of cool as well so many different cuts you can do with the cards have fun with it [Music] cauliflower friends when we do a cauliflower we want to make sure we we start peeling it from the outside the last thing we want to do is go in there with a knife and cut it oh i don't want to do that ever you get cauliflower all over your cutting board and then you break in the beautiful floret we don't want to do that so we go on the inside now be careful you take a pairing knife and you go in there and you remove the leave now if they big leave you remove them first until you get to this you want to remove this boom boom boom boom boom that's a new song i just created yeah so look we remove it we clean it and now we want to do we want to go in there and remove it as much as we can of the heart without trying to remove any florets and as usual friends we want to take a bowl we want to remove all this out of a cutting board so we keep a nice clean surface all right hope i'm not putting this in the middle of the camera so what we want to do now we want to try to pull gently pull gently you may not have to use your knife too much right away you see pull gently you see if you pull gently it'll come to you because you remove where i was holding on to it right boom boom boom boom and you notice going back to the boom boom boom uh you notice friends that i haven't broken anything now if you need very big flowers stop here clean the root if you need big throat you're making cauliflower grating or something then you leave it but if you need a small then you want to clean it and let's say you got a big one in here and you really want a small florets you clear this way remember now you go in and you cut to flow it out cut them out you see for a salad for things it's wonderful let's see cut them out go in there and cut your flour out and then when you do you take them out you see i have not lost any of the custard of from the florets and that's friends the easiest way to prepare your cauliflower now most of the time i like to poach it in milk put it in and then use that milk to make fabulous sauces and bechamel and all that many ways to cook cauliflowers or gratin roasted in the oven the idea is to avoid breaking the little floret and right there my friend this is a you clean a cauliflower [Music] celery okay well many recipes of celery friends first thing we do is we cut the root off because this the only thing you're going to need for is for stock so save it and then you take an oil pile and you wash it and you wash it and you watch it you see it's very dirty so we're not going to use this one we got them right there clean okay so we have we can do dice we can do julienne we can do big dye we can do a lot of things with it very simple first thing i like to do friends i like to clean this edge right there so i have a straight edge right there not very straight i have a straight edge this we use it for stock all right so let's say now then we wanted to make some julienne style this save it for stock we're gonna go in in the bias you see look bias i'm going in the bias very thin bias and right there my friends we're gonna have a self now is it nice and straight as a julienne no but it certainly will do for most dishes if we want a stray julienne we'll go over that in a second all right so now what else do we want to do many times when we do celery we need dice of celery so we always want to make sure we use a piece that is manageable and easy to handle this is very easy to handle this is a little difficult to handle so what we do is we cut our pieces into julienne style the style then we want to cut we want meaning the size of the dice we want to use this is going to be a medium small dice not too small medium salt that something that we're going to use for addition it's going to cook only for a few minutes not very long okay now let's say we want a celery for a salad on salad we're going to cut this in half we're going to cut it in half we're going to cut it in half again or in third we're going to make smaller thinner julienne thinner julienne we're going to take those julienne and again we're going to hold them together and we're going to call them in smaller dice and here we have a small dice and this is would be like for a salad for some place you're really not going to cook it that much should give you a nice little crunch like a tuna salad or something save all this for the stock but now let's say we want to make something we're going to cook it in a big dice because we're going to cook it for a while it's going to be in a stew and we're going to cook it for a while so we're going to make a bigger dice so we're going to go in we're going to cut this in half and again put this side down so it's easier to handle we don't want it to move whatever we do and we get ourselves a bigger dice all right very simple and now let's say we really really want a very big dice so we got to do with these boyfriends and that's for something that is going to cook for a long time okay so now let's say we wanted to make it a thin thin thin thin julienne again we want it to be straight and in case we wanted the smoke long long julienne but or stir-fry maybe but it's still going to be a little too long so we're going to cut them in half cut them thin cut them thin and then we're going to cut it and we got ourselves a nice little julienne and voila my friends very simple way to handle your celery now if you have all those left over you say well i'm not going to make stock this week put it in the container and put it in the freezer the freeze is beautiful and friends this is the easiest way to handle celery oh i forgot to say another thing the leaves what do you do with the leaves great for stock but try try to eat one they don't eat they don't eat so good i don't really like them so i don't use them for nothing i use them for stock [Music] cucumber oh that's a cucumber let me tell you seedless cucumber i love them they're wonderful too big we're gonna have to cut it so we can we can handle it the size of it to make it easy to cut first thing we want to do first when you buy a cucumber make sure you buy them with the extremity affirma if that that's how they start the rat is to go bad on us is they stop right there and then they go down so when you buy make sure you touch your ends of it because sometimes they're wrapped up you can't see it and make sure they're nice and firm at the end of it okay we're going to cut both ends of it anyway we don't want them and now there's some cool things you can do with this i love using a mandolin and then i'll show you how to cut some other way but the cool thing about it is if you use a mandolin yeah a little too thin jump here here you go you can make some really cool things with it see be careful now because when you cut with a mandolin you got to go you change size you know don't go to the same size all the time because you get an angle so you got little slices like that what can you do with it i'll show you you take it right there you put it on the plate and you can make a nice decoration you see you put a salad you put a fish you put everything you want right there on your plate my friends and i promise you that looks awesome and it make it very thin and everybody eats it so it's not just pretty it's actually very cool to eat it see right there boy i cut just enough right here very simple quick little decoration we can do with cucumbers but now we want to put it in salad i love cucumber in salad so what i like to do is cut it so i can again manageable size okay so it's not too big i can definitely handle this to cut it and when i go to cut it straight down and then i cut it straight down and then i cut it straight down and then i cut it straight down and then i cut it straight down and this one i didn't cut it perfectly i'm doing video i'm cutting vegetables i got to do it perfectly and then we put them like this and then we cut them in edible spaces we don't want them to be but they fit perfectly and that's really a super easy way to window your cucumber of course you can make them bigger if you wanted to and if you want to put them on salad you want them a little different shape you cut it again like this not the big remember small enough so you can handle it we go down and we can cut them kind of like what we cut a zucchini in a little bit of an angle so they have more of a presence they have more of a presence in a dish or we're we're gonna go back again this way cut them in half and for a stir-fry that's the way i like to do it so i have nice slices in my stir-fry really really simple and if i want to make a little bigger of course i make them a little bigger but same deal so this friends is a quick little introduction to cucumbers [Music] and that's the fennel friends let me show you how to cut it it's amazing and look how beautiful that is a fennel how do you describe a fennel if you've never had kind of like a a celery texture with a anise flavor let's cut it we have these beautiful uh um uh stems coming out wherever your branch is coming out and you can do a broth you can do soups with it not much you want to save the frown probably for uh a salad uh a decoration on salad and thing they're kind of okay i mean they kind of look like dale i wouldn't worry too much about it if you have to throw them away so we're going to clean this up a little bit the root end we're cleaning a little bit of it you see and then what we do here because we have to clean it up a little bit you just take a little bit of a a pillar and you peel the um the little marking you may have you don't want to peel it too much just a little bit right there you see and voila so now what do we do friends well yeah at this point my friends you really really have to have a very sharp knife you got to cut it in half not this way the length way of it okay so what you do now you you you really have to have a strong uh and you're going to go straight down and you're going to go in and always remember when you do things like that that are very hard you move your knife so you are utilizing the teeth of your knife now you have the inside of it and you can see we have a root a root right there and we need to remove that root so it's very simple you go like this and you go like this and you remove the roots okay so now at this point depends what it is you're going to be doing with it if you're going to put it on salad you're going to cut it with a mandoline very very very thin and i'll show you how to do that in a minute if you're going to make some dice which is most often if you're going to use it for seafood for stoop you need to make a little dice of it so all you got to do is cut it the lengthwise right and take your your um long slices of it and cut them and you have already yourself dice you see because that's the way it is so you have dice you can make them bigger you can make it smaller obviously bigger the slice bigger than ice really simple right but now one of the way well another thing you could do also is uh well first let me show you the salad deal because it's really really important and then i'll show you you can cook them my mom used to cut them in quarters and wrap them with ham and put a bechamel sauce and bake them in a lasagna pan delicious okay or you can take a mandolin it's a very dangerous tool be careful uh you should use it with a guard except it's so big it's difficult to use a guard but what i'm gonna do i'm gonna go right here i'm just gonna make sure the camera can see it right and i'm going to cut them this has to be friends pepper thin well that's a little too thin let's there you go we're going to go like this and then we're going to cut and it has to be so thin and this actually could be thinner it could be a little thinner so we're going to make them just a little thinner come back up now at this point be very careful now we use a mandolin and voila look you see this is perfect right there friends this is absolutely perfect for salad and if you want to make them even a little thinner be careful with that mandolin use the guard use the garl okay and voila my friend look you see look at this right there on salad oh i promise you it gives a nice little and his flavor to you it's fabulous so this is fennel and i know like i was telling you earlier also why not it's difficult to cut them in quarters but right there it's thin enough small enough then we can wrap this with ham put them in a sauce like a bechamel or molly sauce and bake them and they're amazing this is the fennel this is how you handle it [Music] garlic there's so many hacks out there none of them work or just pull out the garlic there's not that many ways to do it one way is for sure you take the garlic you bang it a little bit you bang it a little bit you put it in a bowl put another one [Laughter] what do we get hey we got a little bit of breakage not much but we get a little bit of breakage easier than try to do it yourself okay so no matter what there's no really quick quick quick way to do it friends you take it you cut the root end and you peel it and it really only takes a few seconds to do it sure i got a difficult one now it's going to take two minutes to do this one but normally they come up pretty easy the secret is really take it cut the wooden and then peel and it really is not that big of a deal to do it now you could certainly continue shaking it and you get a little more result but you're never going to get the skin out of them completely unless you do what i'm doing right here friends the only way to really pull the skin out especially if you have a very fresh garlic if you have a very old garlic it comes out really easy it's kind of like the onion what do we do with this now right now well there's so many ways to um to also chop it we can certainly do very thin very very very thin slices and we will get to the flat side and then we'll put it down and we continue now then we have thin slices we can certainly use them like this or we can use a knife and chop it and we have a chopped garlic we can do it this way let's take our time to make a little thinner oh we can simply take a garlic clove put it on the cutting board make sure your knife can go flat on the cutting board you take it right there you make sure you're solid make sure it doesn't move too much and you smack it and right there you have a smacked garlic cloves and all you have to do that's another easy way to do it another easy way to do it is to do it with a video that i did where i take my whole clothes put in a food processor with a little bit of olive oil and i create a garlic puree you can keep it in your freezer and put it in an ice cube tray that's also a super easy way to do it and here it is organic very simple no hacks just take it out take it out of the peel [Music] ginger ginger roots it's actually a vegetables so what i like to do friends like everything i like to cut it in more that's a big one manageable size imaginable manageable size and uh and so we're gonna peel it a little bit you know sometimes i don't even peel it i wash it really good i don't impair it i use the microplane grater matter of fact i have one hose forget microplane grader is a good tool to use for this so we'll do this in a second um and so what i like to do is just to remove the uh the dry ends of it and uh and a lot of people say do with the spoon you know i've tried the spoon deal okay it works it works right now if you if you've got time to do with a spoon then go right ahead and do it with a spoon if you don't have time to do it with a spoon then do it with a paring knife and then you can cut the the dry ends of it but it's up to you this is an expensive vegetables so we don't want to waste too much but if you do it carefully you're not going to waste that much okay all right now what are we doing now with this well we're going to remove it and then what i like to do you can do so many things first of all the best way to manage it is to cut it in slices friends so we're going to do we're going to cut it in slices okay and the slices at this point we can certainly cut them in very very small julienne we can take that julienne and leave it like that if that's the dish we're making or we can tuck that julienne then we have right there and we can cut it oh hey come back over here we can cut in dice take that julienne put them all together they're not cooperating and we're going to cut it in little dice so we have a julienne of ginger or we have a dice of ginger take the back of the knife put it right there oh if we want it of course some recipe you can put the whole thing in there and you can remove it it gives you a really nice flavor or what you can do if you really wanted to smash the fig you take the the slices and you're gonna pound it against the grain of it and all you're gonna do is you're gonna go like this and you're gonna smash it i cut it a little too big but if you notice see by smashing it right there all you got to do at these point points is give it a quick little cut and you got yourself really easy puree of ginger or you can take your microplane grater this is the one you use for the chocolate and the cheese be careful because that's how you make pink ginger here you have a friend you see look be careful i say be careful because one time i didn't be careful i was doing something else and right here you also have grated ginger and oh make sure when you buy one it's nice and firm it doesn't have too many root by ends of it like that and um friends this is a quick little introduction to ginger [Music] leeks another onion part of the onion family when you buy them you got to make sure they s nice and white wider it is sweeter it is and the white part grows into the ground when it comes out the clothing style and then that's bitter but this my friends is delicious for stockings and soups this is delicious for anything really wonderful how do we clean it full of stand because it goes into the ground first we'll remove the roots sometimes there's a big root in there they removed there already so what i do is i cut the roots and that depends i decide what i want to do with it if i'm going to make julienne and i'm going to cook with it i cut them about that size right there cut them to size this size and then maybe we can get this one right there and this we save it for stock and soup because it's quite bitter let's talk with this one right here how do we do it we just cut it in half and then this one is not very dirty you see there's not much sand in this guy right there you see normally they're full of sand right there so what i do is i take them and i put them in here and i wash them you see i wash them this one has no sand in it i picked up a clean one to show you how to clean them friends hey what are you gonna do this already let's see if this guy right there may have a little bit but i doubt it if there is no sand in the root there probably is no sand here either and you see no stains out there no sense now the beautiful thing about this my friends is then we can now cut beautiful juliennes what we do we take about it's like a sheet look at this how cool is that so you take about three or four put them aside put them down and now you can make beautiful julienne and you can cook them you can put them in so many different dishes it's wonderful if you never had uh uh leeks my friends you see look beautiful juliennes all right so this is how we make the juliennes of leeks some recipe i'll use them and you'll see it now we can also do plain and simple cut them in rounds and thin rounds also are great for salads they're great for all kind of different dishes and the rest of it cut it up big and save it and if you're not going to make stock right away or soup right away cut it up and put it in the freezer it stays wonderful in the freezer this is how you end the leeks [Music] mushrooms whoa look at it it's a portobello mushroom big ones boy that's a nice specimen right there friends we'll talk about this in a minute because the most important mushroom that everybody uses is the button mushroom you know i don't wash them i um i wipe them with a with a cloth you know and uh people say no don't wash them they're gonna absorb more water they don't absorb water i promise you you take some mushroom you put them in you weigh them then you put them in water and you shake the water and you weigh them they weigh the same they don't absorb water so anyway what do we do with this well we want to slice it and um i don't really like the stems but some people don't mind eating the stems up to you you know if you like that i find it to be woodsy so i usually remove it but it's really up to you my friends and then what we're going to do now we're going to slice it now if you're making a sauce that you want small pieces of mushroom this could be a little too big so you know what i do i get a couple of slices right there and then i flip it around and then i cut it like this and then i may flip it again so for a delicate sauce i may not have big pieces of mushroom okay but if i want a big piece of the mushroom then just skip it like this and then when it falls i still fall and we got a little bigger mushroom okay and then we can dice them we can do all kinds of different things with it all the mushrooms are basically the same okay you want to keep the the the the stem you keep the stem they're pretty with the stem you see they they looked a little prettier with the stem you know it's really up to you my friend the stem no stem is up to you you like it keep it you don't like it throw it away like i do um shiitake creamini mushrooms very woodsy very woodsy stems that you could never want to eat it so i twist it and i get rid of it and then i cut it the same way the best one i'm making i may not want a long pieces of this mushroom which means i'll cut it this way okay it's really up to you depends what it is you're making okay you're making a risotto you want a nice beautiful piece of the mushroom you're making the sauce you may not want it so big you cut it all smaller but same deal you cut up and then you cut it in half the portabella mushroom different deal what we have to do here my friends is uh if you look at it it's got you know what let me clean this stuff out of the way friends so everybody can see what i'm doing we're going to make a nice uh mushroom risotto tonight for dinner because i got them right here so let me put this right here clean this up if you look at the portobello mushroom my friends you see it's got gills in it they look like a fish so when you buy if you buy it with a stem on it you want to remove the stem and what i recommend you do is you don't yank it you want to squeeze it see you're squeezing it see i'm going to do it so the camera can see it you're squeezing it you see squeezing it here that's what you do and if you look at it it's pretty woodsy and nothing good in here and then what we want to do friends we want to take a bowl and we want to scrape the gills like a kill of a fish believe me yeah they're not good you don't want you definitely want to scrape them we got a video and jack is going to put a a link of it uh this was the first video that i did on this channel when i took it over about a year and a half ago that was our first video so we probably need a little green in the video but we did it within this beautiful uh portobello mushroom appetizer amazing you gotta watch it's really nice video so you can do it like i did in the video you put in a nice vinaigrette you can roast them you can grill them if you're gonna cut them again same kind of deal okay you can do it like this grill it but remember you got to rehydrate them a little bit you put some vinaigrettes in there otherwise you put them on the grill and if you do that indirect heating the flame is over there the mushroom is over there so it doesn't get burned with it with the oil because you're going to put it in the vinaigrette if you want to cut it here's what i recommend you do friend you cut it in half and then you cut it now all of a sudden you got some nice pieces of mushroom and of course if they're too big then you cut them in half okay but otherwise just like this depends what it is you're making you're making a sauce with portobello mushroom you better cut them in half okay otherwise that's it friends this is a very small and fun introduction to mushroom the onion oh wow that is definitely the most often used vegetables friends i'm going to use a red onion because it's easier for me to demonstrate uh what i'm talking about so um top root end of the onion i maintain and i will always maintain then it's best to remove the root and don't worry about crying more you don't cry anymore because you remove the root but that's not today's video we'll do another one in detail so don't worry about this what we want to do is we want to remove the roots but little little because we're not going to use it so we might as well get rid of it we're not gonna use it if we don't use it get rid of it don't worry about uh jeopardizing the integrity of the onion it does not remove the top remove it's easier if you remove now the the red onion when it's super fresh like this guy right there it's not always easy to peel but it's easy if you use your paring knife you see i'm using my paring knife and i'm going over it and i'm peeling it i'm grabbing the skin right there and i'm pulling it okay they're not always exactly easy to do in the um um in the red onion white onion much easier than the red onion in this case you see it's giving me a little issue but not a problem very fresh when it's fresh like that the skin is super super super tight on it okay so now we're going to take it we're going to remove it so we have a clean work surface very important friends always have a clean clean work surface when we cut the onion uh in half we always wanted to make sure we cut it pull the pole never against the grain unless you're making onion rings it's the only time you do that so we're going to cut it and we're going to make sure we got two perfect half like i said this is not another onion video this is just the fit in this format of cutting the vegetables so we're going to do we're going to move forward and we're going to cut it and we're going to release now the reason why it's very important that i use the red onions because i wanted you to see you see friends i removed the roots but you see a tight delay if you really look carefully here very very tight and look what happened on the top they're very loose on the top is because as they grow they grow bigger and they release right here so the root end is still attached but you see the layers are perfectly well attached to it even if you remove the roots okay so what else do we do now let's say we want to dice it very very simple we just take a knife and we dice it but we don't want to cut the whole thing we don't want to go all the way to the end so we cut about what would you say 90 80 percent of it you cut you don't cut all the way through so you don't go like this you cut like this very simple now we get to the end you want to hold it carefully like this so we hold stay together but you notice it's holding together pretty good right now we're going to take this guy and now what do we do we turn it around and we're going to go remember when you use a knife you always want to use a forward or backward motion now you say how come it didn't do the vertical cut i'll show you why i didn't do the vertical cut friends if you notice the onion right here how it's cut you see all the little cut right here remember it's already cut for you in juke should we call him julienne i call him julian now look at this now you see that vertical cut what do you think what sense does that make for me to put a vertical cut here that means this guy is cut in half this one's cut in half this one can't have but not this one not this one so you say well let's make two riveted cord cut okay so we do one here and we do one here now does that mean what happened to those guys we don't cut them you don't need the vertical cut okay look look i will show you i'll show you i'll show you it's very simple my friend very very simple okay look look how beautiful it is okay so all right you're gonna say oh you know what the one at the end because you didn't go in an angle is a little bigger have you ever had a dish where you go you know that was very good but i had a piece of onion was a little bigger than the other get out of my kitchen all right so now i want to show you now what do we do with the end friends what do we do with the ends okay we go back and we give it a sea look we give it another little cut and you notice the onion is not falling apart okay and we continue now we don't need to worry about the root because the wood is gone we put it down we'll do exactly the same thing and you know what we do at the end let's give it a little cut like this using our knife okay and if some pieces are a little bigger than the next you know what i don't think this will make a difference now this is for the minced onion and now i'm going to show you another video i'm going to take this one the skin and i'm going to show you another video where we're gonna do the white onion okay so we're gonna peel it this is a yellow spanish onion remember the top and the bottom and then we're gonna use a berry knife and we're going to pull the skin sometimes it comes super easy and sometimes if it's super super fresh it takes a little while to come but eventually it does see this is also another very fresh one voila clean up a wood surface okay so now now that we have another clean on you i'm going to show you how to make different cuts different cuts where sometimes you making a recipe where you want a julienne of onion but not so big so i'm going to show you remember always cut with the grain pull the pole never cut against the grain i'll show you all right so cut it in half same thing with the with the yellow onion you can see then the the the root end is super super tight and on the top of it they're very very loose you can see it i mean it's difficult to see that's why i did with the red onion so now what we're going to do we're going to make sure we know where the root is and the root is right there so when we cut it in half we're going to make the julienne all we're doing basically now you can make them bigger making it thinner and then you have yourself julienne now those may be too long depends what it is you're cooking okay they may be too long like for instance if you're making an onion soup you don't want a big piece like that in your spoon otherwise it'll hang in your spoon it won't be easy to eat so you know what i do i take them and i cut them in half right and then i continue cutting and then oh i didn't show you we get to to this part right here sure you can go like this but it's not that's practical so you know what i do i let it go down and then it makes it easy to continue my cuts based on whatever size it is that i'm going to be when you get over here be careful all right so now you have yourself the half of julienne then you see me use a very very often in a recipe where the onion is more present than a diced onion but it's not too much and here obviously something would have to cook a long time otherwise his hands now onion wings friends that's another cut then we do a lot let me move this you know what i'm gonna move this out of the way friends so i have a clean cutting board on your wings it's probably the uh we have to be very careful with all your mixed friends because you go you hold the whole big onion and uh and uh and when you do it you're like oh hey mama mia so you have to be really really really firm when you do this you're cutting an onion i put my hand here up with my rhino here and i go straight down and you got to be careful keep your knife straight you see keep your knives straight my friend when you're making onion rings and voila you got yourself on your rings make sure you keep your knife straight otherwise you have onion ring oh look at this guy that's part of the skin sometimes they have a little bit of the skin look at this you have beautiful russian wings well that was a quick little introduction my friends to onio potatoes so many recipes use potatoes so let's figure out a few ways to cut the potatoes friends the number one thing to do is be very careful because the potato rolls around and we don't want to cut something and rolls around so we want to cut aside to make it flat first and um and and if you notice this this is wide and this is skinnier all the potatoes are kind of like that there's white side and the skinny side so the first one we're going to cut is going to be the skinny one because that's the easiest one to cut when it doesn't move so what i do is i secure the potatoes very carefully this way this way whatever is comfortable i like to use the palm of my hand and then i move remember friend we want to move the knife forward otherwise it sticks and sometimes it's still going to stick those knives really are cool this is called hollow ground it creates a little air pocket between the potato and the knife so it doesn't stick as much so what we're going to do we're going to move forward as we cut so we activate the teeth and it doesn't stick so much we go in and we move forward and as we move backwards see it doesn't stick at all why am i cutting this because now i have a flat side i'm going to show you how to make the perfect dice you don't want to make the perfect dice you don't need to remove the edge but i like to remove the edge remember always see we're now solid right we're going forward backward as long as we do some motion this is the way if you went to culinary school you would thought i do do it at home you certainly don't need to do it this way so now this you can serve for mashed potatoes you can certainly don't do it at home if you don't want to do a perfect square but if you want to do a perfect square you'll have to do it now now what we're going to do here we're going to cut big slices of it the size of your slice will determine the size of your dice if i cut the potato in half i'm going to have very large dice which is great for uh uh fried potatoes home fried bigger bigger size if i cut them depends the size that i'm gonna do the smallest one we're gonna do if we wanna do a a like a potatoes for a frittata or something we don't want to make it too big so we want to cut it small so remember we're going forward and backward see look remember forward up and backward and hold the potato nice and tight so forward and backward all forward and down so now when we get to here oh this is a little fragile right so you know what i do i take it and i cut it each way and go backward forward backward forward backward all right so we're going to leave that aside so now what we do we take the you can do two or three at together at the time but at the beginning i recommend you don't do more than two slices and you hold them you see the pinky boop all my fingers while they are holding and we're going to cut down and what we're going to do right there friends we're making perfect julienne if we were to make french fries we would have perfect julienne right here you see right so now we're going to take those julienne and we're going to cut them in dice you see now we have perfect dice that means all sides are equal about we're not doing a food competition here this is kind of about so this is a this would be a frittata or for an omelette now let's say we wanted to make a little bigger so we we can't change anymore now because we already got one side cut so we can't change anymore so we'll have to keep that same size for the whole potatoes you see so this is for kind of like a medium die so let's put this aside for now and let's go to another potatoes where we can do a different size okay so now again we're doing the same principle i keep them in water so they don't um oxidize and turn great remember same principle we're going we're down down down boom and boom now let's say we want to make a little larger dice i like to keep my area i'm going to make nice mashed potatoes tonight so what we do instead of cutting them that size we're going to cut the potato in three now remember we got bigger so not bigger a slice so now we're gonna take one two one two and then we're gonna put this like this and now we got ourselves bigger dice you see look at this and this is more for like a a fried or uh and here we have it much bigger like so remember the size of your slice will determine the size of your julienne which will determine the size of your dice then you can have some cool uh cutters also to make some interesting uh uh potatoes uh especially fries you can do some full thing you get those things right there it's uh i think it's called crinkle cut so you can get those those colors you go straight down and it gives you a crinkle so you do it again you see look right and then you got like that or you can go in and you get yourself some kirkl what do you call kirk or fries and you got yourself you see so the idea is to go in really easy to do so we cut straight down and then we go the opposite of the line and we're gonna save some cool looking fries right there so small dice big dice the lesson to learn is to make sure the potato is stable it doesn't move so much and we keep them in water so they don't oxidize the size of the dice is based on the size of your slice and that's for potato easy scallion part of the onion family uh first thing we want to do is we want to clean up a little bit the end and then we're going to remove the roots really simple remove the roots you never never use it now at this point this white part is going to take longer to cook than this when we cut it we want to make sure we cut it in an angle looks better looks better you see put this aside those are going to take a little bit longer to cook and then the uh the the green part this great for salad is great for any dish you put them at the end and you cut it really really simple makes a nice little presentation and that's it that's the battle for scallion this is scallion [Music] shallots this is also from the onion family they're wonderful when you buy them try to buy some big ones because they're much easier to handle than the little one you know it depends where you're going again you pair them like you peel an onion and you basically you handle the same way you use an onion so small onion except we may have to cut it in half let's go into it i'll show you what i'm talking about we remove the roots like we do for the onion and we remove the top sometimes it's easier to remove both before we remove the uh the skin of them and sometimes they like the onion they're very tight my friends very tight right on it you see very very very tight very good that means it's nice and fresh now sometimes it's very easy to see you can divide them in half this one you count this one is definitely made like an onion so we're gonna cut it in half and if we look this is like a miniature red onion it really is the same thing why do we use them they're much more delicate than on your in sauces so remember the root end root ends away from us and what we're going to do like we're doing on yo now we're going to cut them very small very very small oh this is a very very soft one you see because my knife is super super sharp so we're going to go in like an onion remember now don't be out there go getting any um vertical cut okay it makes no sense at all you see the the shadows like the onion is already cut for you in julienne if you will they bend the julienne but they already cut all we got to do is go up and down up and down up and down up and down and at the end we go like this and we have ourselves a perfectly perfectly minced shallots you see and this in sauces you usually put it as one of the first ingredient and i promise your friends after you cook it for a few minutes you're not too concerned it's one piece a little bigger than the next you won't even be able to i promise you so relax don't go out there be dangerous without the vertical cuts or whatever they call it whenever you see somebody do that i cringe we should never put a knife in the direction of our hand to begin with anyway so now friends we're going to do the same thing as we do the onion we're going to make little julienne a little junior we go up and down remember never we're going with the direction of pole to pole always pull the poles pull the pole so when you're doing shots you go up and down and we go pull the pole and right there we got ourselves some beautiful julienne of shallots and this is a very quick introduction to shallots [Music] squash yellow squash zucchini that's a squash too friends uh i'm gonna cut them i love squash i can eat them with anything very simple right first thing we're gonna do we're gonna cut both ends because that you don't want to eat okay no matter what it is you never want to eat that and then there's so many ways to cut it okay but um uh the most common way to cut it you know and i love to you got to cook them a little bit they don't need to cook a lot of time but they need to cook a little bit you can cut them in half because it's more manageable it's easier than trying to handle the whole thing and then you remember we try to always cut something then it's not moving too much so let's say that we want to make some uh we're going to cut them straight we're going to be careful okay and now we can cut them in so different way we're gonna make some cool little julienne out of it you see we cut them like this you got some cold julienne now those are gonna cook really fast and they look kind of cool you see very simple right and they look really cool of course we can do some dices and uh and so we cut the slices this way now it gets this way and we cut it this way and then we can do our dices or we can do some elongated bigger pieces depends what it is you're going to be doing with it in an angle they're not going to cool same idea if you want to cut them in dices then of course you cut this in dices very simple and also i have a really cool trick let's say you're making a risotto and and and you want to put squash in it you can let it cook at the last minute you just put it in in your vegetable grater and you do this and let me tell you this is and just straight up you see you put this on your on your uh uh rice on your soup at the last minute it cooks super super fast and it looks really really really good you can do exactly the same with a zucchini obviously it would look better if i had a whole bigger piece but you got the idea you see so now you got green and you got yellow really really simple now what i like to do when i do a stir-fry is cut them in little pieces so the yellow i kind of handle it the ends of it end a little bit differently let me get this guy straight right there so we're going to cut it and usually i cut them this way let me put this out of the way and depends on how much how long i'm going to cook it but if i make a stir-fry then i just cut them like this very simple and those my friends are going to cook super super super super fast depends how big how long they cook you cut them a little bigger and really really simple so this my friends is an introduction to squash [Music] tomatoes we're gonna cut them two different ways folks we're going to cut them with the skin on and without the skin without the skin it's go and we're going to dice them it's called a tomato con casse if we were to use the right terminology and uh what we're going to do we're going to take the skin now it helps if your tomato is very well ripened vine ripened that is and flowed out we have issues with that uh we don't get really nice tomatoes but i heard in new jersey they get beautiful tomato take it put it in boiling water as you put it in boiling water you want to make sure you have ice water ready to go how long it's gonna take it's based on how ripe is your tomatoes could take a few seconds it could take a couple of minutes okay so how do we know it's ready you can see friends right there the skin of the tomatoes is starting to peel off let me show you real quick the minute that happens right there you can see it you have to put in ice water immediately immediately in ice water friends otherwise your tomato will cook the purpose of this exercise is not to um to cook the tomato we don't want to cook it we just wanted to remove the skin and the shocking by the way this is how you do most vegetables broccoli green beans asparagus boiling water oh ice water right away stop the cooking process so here we have it right here make sure it's nice and cold now super cold water and the water is super cold that means you put ice at the same time you turn on the heat takes as long to chill this water as it has to boil this water so we're gonna take it out gonna get ourself a bowl and then what we're going to do we're going to peel the skin off see look it comes right off you see now if you're very good with a paring knife you can try to peel it off vegetable pillow would have to be very very very sharp to do these friends see it comes right off this is what happened now like i say your tomato if it's not a ripe tomatoes buying ripened tomato could take a long time for this to happen the skin to come off what we're going to do now we're going to put it upside down and we're going to cut it around the core around the core now if you have a beautifully vine ripened tomato the whole life of the tomatoes you're not gonna have the white core like we have right here i'm gonna put this right here i hope that does not block the camera and what i like to do friends i like to actually remove the seeds you see remove the seeds now this is just a classical way of making a con cassette a tomato con cassette you don't want to remove the seed and or the skin then we're going to show you another way to cut them in a minute you can do that as well you want to take your time to remove the seeds and this is a when would you use that if you're making a risotto you want to put tomatoes in there and you want to make a delicate dish without the the seeds and the the skin then it's a perfect way of doing it and then what we'll do here friends will take and you see there still is a few seeds left i'm obviously not taking too long to do you can certainly take better time to do it and then you get down at the end of the day and you have yourself a now if you take your time to clean it a little bit better you really have yourself a beautiful chopped and and diced peeled tomatoes then will be absolutely delicious in in a finished risottos or even a pasta dish at the end you can put this right on there and this my friends is very delicate okay so this is one way of doing the tomatoes and if you don't want a bottle doing it this way then what you're gonna do let me get a cleaning let me move this out of the way so we don't confuse them and we're gonna cut it like i have it right here and how do we do this very simple we take the tomato we leave the core we remove a little bit of the leaves there if they are big in a way we don't remove the call we leave the core and then what we do is we're going to cut it now you need a super super sharp knife for this if you don't have a super sharp knife for this then you want to use a serrated knife it would work well remember when you use you cut a tomato you want to move and you leave about i don't know 10 of the tomato kind of like when you're doing an onion you're leaving the core same same kind of idea you see remember making my movement to activate the actual teeth of my knife you see and you make them big small however you want it obviously smaller you make them and more difficult is going gonna be to do and then you keep your tomato straight up and then you be careful with your fingers and you have yourself it dice tomatoes you see now if you were not in florida if you were in new jersey you would have a beautiful tomato that doesn't have all that white in there you can certainly take the time to do this as well and this is how you dice a tomato con cassette classical way of doing it or just simply like this for also a salad or a pasta or whatever you may want to do it and that's the way i dice a potato tomato well i hope you enjoyed this very long video folks i did it for you let us know if you made it all the way to the end in a comment below remember thumbs up subscribe to the channel and ring that bell we'll see you in the next couple of days with another fantastic video [Music]

Channel: Chef Jean-Pierre

Views: 1,632,005

Keywords: How to cut vegetables, how to cut vegetables like a pro, how to cut vegetables like a chef, vegetable, basic knife skills, knife skills, vegetables, cutting, julienne, how to chop, veggies, chopping vegetables, vegetable cutting, cut vegetables, cutting skills, how to dice, how to julienne carrots, vegetable cutting skills, knife skills tutorial, cutting techniques, how to julienne vegetables, how to cut julienne, cutting vegetables technique, knife skills chef

Id: QjZ1LFqNWRM

Length: 82min 34sec (4954 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 15 2022