Separating Wheat from Chiffonade

The French and food: a pairing au naturel. Anyone who’s worked in a kitchen, from the entry-level to the celebrity chef, knows that cuisine of virtually any type has a connection to France. Working in a kitchen is a crash course in history, technique, and language. Let’s decode the French term/technique chiffonade. 

The Chiffonade Technique in a Nutshell 

Enter the chiffonade, a style of cutting up ingredients that you probably do at home whether you realize it’s called that or not. The chiffonade is distinct from the brunoise and julienne. The former produces small cubes and the latter – also called a French cut – matchsticks. The chiffonade produces long, thin strips, usually of a leafy vegetable. The technique is as follows: stack, roll, and slice. It’s a great all-purpose kitchen skill to have for cooking, fine motor skills, and focus. Sometimes a rustic cut is just what is needed, but oftentimes something more bite-sized and precise beckons. For the video generation or visual learners, here is a short tutorial. 

Getting Rooty

The root of the word chiffonade is chiffonner: to crumple. Rolling crumples the ingredient being cut and with herbs or leafy greens this often unleashes nutrients and aroma. Even though the technique has been around nearly as long as humanity, the word itself did not enter the lexicon until the late 1800s. However, archaeology and anthropology show that bundled/crumpled herbs, leaves, and leafy matter has been around indigenously for a long time. 

Practicing the Technique 

With spring sprung and summer fast approaching, Hunterdon County provides many opportunities to gather fresh herbs and wild

edibles to practice the technique on. Practicing foraging provides a wonderful chance to develop one’s mind and eye for spotting what’s growing naturally and what’s best avoided. Chiffonading fruit is a great way to get it to a size where it can be incorporated as a topping, garnish, or added to drinking water for a fruity boost. It’s a fantastic technique, especially for herbs, which releases pleasant smells into the air and helps break down the compounds of the herb. This is an ancient technique that’s been practiced medicinally and in folk remedies for millennia. And using a sharp knife for precise cuts is a great way to rekindle the primitive skill of knife sharpening. The chiffonade provides a great happy medium between the pulverization of blenders and the rustic cut.  

“Chif” Becky 

Chef Bex has devised a cocktail party menu package that allows for three price ranges, from just enough to more than enough. The Chef doesn’t cut corners with anything, and by learning the process of the chiffonade you see just how much work goes into her food. Self-taught, the Chef’s skills are hardwired into her muscle memory and it shows how even a “fancy” technique/term like the chiffonade is accessible to anyone. So get cutting and we look forward to seeing you at Bex!