It’s a relaxing work-night (you convince yourself), and you’re practicing your adulting by home-cheffing a dish that includes a little green green. You’re thinking local kale or sage from the garden out back, right? Thought so. You hipster. But it seems you have reached an impasse and have two options. 1. Hack at poor greens with your record-breakingly dull knife and produce a jolly-green-genocide reminiscent of shape-cutting (obliterating) day in kindergarten. 2. Whack forenamed greens repeatedly until their geometric diversity is imperceivable, your pits leak saline and impatience, and the neighbor arrives at your door, “uhh is everything ok in there?”. There’s gotta be a way to efficiently create uniform pieces of leafluster, and maybe, just maybe make them look beautiful in the process. I have good news for you: it’s called a chiffonade.
Definition
Much simpler to pronounce than it looks: SHifəˈnäd (or via farmyard phonetics) shif-uh-nod. Now that you know how to pronounce it, you’re probably saying “chiff-a-what?”
The dictionary says it best. A chiffonade is “shredded or finely cut vegetables or herbs used especially as a garnish.” There you have it. I like to call it “fancy cutting.” Not quite as technical, but for real, do these little, delicate strips not make you want to holler “daaaaaaaang, they fancy!”? No? Just me then?
The How-to
Step 1
First, stack your garden herbs (or leafy veggies) on your cutting board. Don’t stack them too high – you need to be able to roll them up. If your herby or leafy green tower is too high, you can chiffonade them in separate batches.
Step 2
Next, roll the leaves up tightly.
Step 3
Then, with a sharp knife, carefully cut your herbs/veggies into thin strips. Pro tip: keep the tip of your knife on the board while you cut, making a choo-choo motion. Hold them tightly with one hand to keep them rolled while you slice them into strips with your other hard. Did I say, carefully?
Take it from the girl who has cut her fingers with a knife more times than she would like to admit… definitely don’t ask Austin about the time I held a raw chicken breast in my hand and proceeded to butterfly-cut it in the direction of my hand.
Yep, lost a lot of blood on that one… especially considering these were a brand-freaking-new set of chef-worthy knives gifted to me by the hubs. Apparently they’re 10 times sharper than our dollar store, dumpster-reclaimed, thrift-shop re-marketed, junk-0 blades from the land of the brandless & broken (kidding about the dollar store comment. More like low-end grocery store, manager special, BOGO, nobody else had the stupid to make the “hefty” investment). We still use the OG knife set sharp-edge-down to smash tomatoes for sauces and soups, and to flatten bell peppers without ever breaking the skin. *Liz rolling her eyes at Austin for inserting this nonsense*
Donzo
There you go, now you have beautiful little strips of herbs or leafy greens. Here, I’ve done a chiffonade of kale to be cooked into a dish and some sage to use as a garnish. Knock yourself out using this technique as a fun, fancy alternative to simply chopping. I mean, it actually tastes better when it looks prettier, right? Happy chiffonad-ing! (Is that a thing?)
