I think a wedge of tomato doesn't taste nearly as good as a slice of tomato."įood scientists study exactly that phenomenon. "So you're getting a lot of tomato aroma when you eat. "With a tomato, if you slice it and spread the slices out on a plate, you're going to get a lot more of the tomato smell than if it's quartered and piled up," he says. "If you slice a radish really thin, you just get the flavor without the snap pop crunch, which is really an important part of the radish."Īroma also contributes to flavor, and Fuller believes different cuts can make certain fruits and vegetables smell differently. "Flavor is the taste of what is in your mouth, but it is also partly textural," he says. The Salt A Longing For Lentils, Or How I Learned To Find Home Where The Daal Isīill Fuller, corporate chef for the Pittsburgh-based big Burrito Restaurant Group (bBRG), agrees. I've often wondered whether all this attention to the size and geometry of my produce cuts really matters. I'd really rather just throw the ingredients in the food processor and move on. To pull it off correctly, I'm instructed to mince the shallot, thinly slice the green onions, chop the cilantro, grate the ginger, and cut the cucumbers and carrots into matchsticks.
Take this recipe for lettuce wraps with hoisin-peanut sauce. The food processor, no matter how many blades it may come with, often doesn't cut it.
I failed to consider that cookbook authors have particular ideas about how each ingredient should be prepped.
Before owning one, I used to see them looking all shiny and powerful in the department store, and I'd fantasize about never chopping a vegetable by hand again. The food processor is, for me, hugely disappointing. Flavor really does depend on how you slice it, experts tell us - though the reasons why are complicated.