29 Vegetable Tips Every Home Cook Should Know

Today, I'm gonna show you vegetable hacks.

I learned these techniques at culinary school and on the job

and you can use them every single time you cook.

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A lot of times in culinary school,

we teach how to cut an onion a certain way,

and I personally do not like the method

they teach in culinary school.

Traditionally, you're taught to cut the onion

like this and then give a cross cut like this.

And I always thought that was a little strange

because we're teaching students

and people how to cut towards themself.

This method works, you get a decent dice,

but the best way I feel to do it is,

put it on its flat side

and instead of cutting it like this,

cut it across the grain.

Not all the way through.

Make sure you leave that end attached,

and then we kinda go up and over.

We follow the contour of the onion.

With the end piece, I just make a couple of cuts,

chop it up, and you have an onion diced

in basically one third of the time.

If I'm gonna eat raw onions,

instead of having that, like, really sharp flavor

or having really stinky onion breath,

then we take our onions and we will put them into a bowl,

and we're gonna soak these in a little bit of cold water.

It makes the onions a little crisper,

but it also takes away some of that onion-y bite.

Let 'em soak for about two or three minutes,

agitate them, and then put 'em through a colander,

and your onions will lose that really strong, onion-y bite.

You've come here for vegetable hacks and tips.

I'm sure you're expecting me to say

how to stop crying from onions.

The thing that I found actually works the best

are contact lenses.

I've had contact lenses for about my whole life basically,

and that's the only thing that has saved me

from crying from onions.

So, onion skins and onion trim.

I save this, right?

I use this in my stock.

This was taught to me in culinary school

by a nice professor, Dieter Faulkner.

He was from Germany and he says,

No, you use the onion skins in your stock.

It gives them a good color.

In front of me,

I have two stocks made with the same ingredients,

except this one has onion skin in it.

I find that chicken stock sometimes without onion skins

turns a little grayish.

And when I use the onion skins in trim,

I get a nice golden stock.

That doesn't change the flavor all that much,

but people eat with their eyes.

If you see kind of a gray chicken stock

or a nice golden one,

you're gonna choose the nice golden stock.

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Fresh herbs are a staple in restaurants.

We use them all the time.

But the problem that we have with fresh herbs is they wilt.

They're very delicate.

They kind of like start to go bad really fast.

Technically, you could use this,

but it's really not gonna be that great,

so what I like to do with my herbs

is that when I get them home,

I'm gonna take a piece of paper towel.

Take your bundle of herbs.

Put it in your paper towel.

Wrap it up.

This is gonna keep any excess moisture away from the herbs.

Put them into a Ziploc bag.

Seal it up.

And when I store herbs like this,

sometimes they can last up to a week.

These are some herbs I've had in the fridge overnight,

wrapped in a paper towel in a plastic bag.

If you look at them, they're still beautiful.

Their leaves are crisp, they're firm,

they're not wilted out and dried out.

So, using this method,

your herbs will last you a lot longer.

Most people over-chop their herbs

and lose all of the flavor into their cutting board.

We basically get a fine dust of chopped parsley.

So, my approach to chopping herbs

is a little bit different, right?

First of all, I'm not too worried

about having a little stem in there.

As long as the stems aren't big and thick like this,

they're gonna add some flavor to your herbs.

Cut these off.

Do not get rid of those stems.

I'm putting them aside.

I get my herbs and I bundle them together,

rolling this up and making it tight like that.

And I'm gonna chop them really small here

so I don't have to run my knife through them too many times.

I still have some big leaves in there,

so I gave my pile a little bit of a turn.

Go really tight on your chop.

And that's basically as much

as I will chop parsley or cilantro.

For parsley and cilantro, some stem is okay,

but the ones that are a little thicker and woodier,

don't throw 'em away.

They're perfect for stock.

And if I have herbs like thyme,

thyme has really woody stems,

so I can take my time off of the plant,

and instead of chopping this woody stem,

just take that stem and throw it right into your stock.

Zero waste.

Flavors your stock really well.

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One thing that drives me nuts

is watching people cut bell peppers.

What most people do is they'll cut off this end,

cut off this end, and then take the core out.

To me, that's so wasteful

'cause they usually throw the ends out.

What I like to do is take my bell pepper,

cut it down the center.

Cutting your bell pepper in half equals less waste.

The core kinda just comes right out.

Give it a tap to get our seeds out.

And we're done.

A lot of people when they get a spicy chili,

like a jalapeno, think that the seeds hold all the heat,

and they are wrong.

If you cut this pepper in half,

these white ribs right here

actually hold a lot of heat in the peppers.

So, if you wanna make your chilies less spicy,

cut it in half, take those ribs out,

tap out my seeds, take out that seed pod,

make sure that we get all these white ribs off

and your chili will be a little less spicy.

So, the seeds can be spicy,

but the spice comes from the ribs.

One technique I love, I take my pepper,

I put it on a really hot grill or a hot grill pan,

and we're just gonna let it char on all sides.

And then get it into a bowl right away

with some plastic wrap.

Not only is the pepper gonna steam,

it's gonna continue cooking.

This is gonna make it easy to take off the skin.

This has been steaming for about a half hour, 45 minutes.

And if you look, not only do I have some juice there,

which you wanna keep because that juice has a lot of flavor,

you can see that my skin is super wrinkly.

Look how easy the skin comes off.

The steaming is key to this.

Our pepper has some nice brownness

and some caramelization to it,

and that's how you roast and peel a pepper.

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This might be a controversial take,

but as a chef, I'm always trying to save time.

When I peel my potatoes,

I don't wash them before I peel them.

I am always gonna wash them

before I cook them or process them.

So, I feel like it's a wasted step.

Most potatoes nowadays are cleaned in the processing plant.

So, whatever dirt is on there,

it's just a light film of dirt.

Now, one of the things about potatoes

is you never wanna store them with onions.

Believe it or not, onions give off a gas

that make potatoes go bad quicker.

So, you wanna keep 'em in a cool, dry place,

just cool, dry place in a separate area.

Don't overcomplicate peeling potatoes.

It's oblong, so the top and the bottom

are always kind of just the small sides.

I always peel my top first, then my bottom,

and then just connect the lines.

Now, one cool thing about potato peelers,

and most people don't know what it is,

I call that the doohickey, the whatchamacallit,

that is there to get eyes out of the potatoes.

So, if there's any blemishes,

you wanna use that to get any blemishes out of your potato.

At this point, I'm gonna put my potato in water.

Storing your potatoes in water prevents oxidation.

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Ginger is one of those things

that I think confuses a lot of people

because it has a lot of knobs

and a lot of different things going on with it,

but ginger can be actually very easy to work with.

Ginger has lots of fibers in it,

and those fibers tend to get caught in the peeler.

So, when I peel my ginger,

I usually take these little knobs off.

I don't throw those knobs away.

If I do a ginger broth or I put it in, like, my pho,

I use those for that.

But for the most part,

when it comes to peeling ginger, use the spoon.

I turn it over and I just rub it

or pull against my ginger,

and basically, the peel kinda just slides right off.

It goes over the bumps.

It's cleaner, it's easier.

There's no fibers caught in your peeler.

Use the spoon, people.

Now that my ginger's peeled, I wanna chop it.

And we're gonna smash it for easier chopping.

Cut it into rounds or coins.

Basically the size of, like, maybe a nickel.

I wouldn't go anything bigger than a quarter.

Ginger has fibers running through it,

so we're cutting across those fibers and making them small.

And then instead of kinda just chopping this up

with my knife, now what I do is I put it

on the edge of my board, give it a smash.

Push that aside.

If it doesn't get really small, give it another smash.

And then right now, if I just run my knife through it,

quick and easy chopped ginger by smashing it.

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Blanching is a process where we take a vegetable

and we submerge 'em into boiling water,

then we put 'em into an ice bath.

So, we start cooking them

and then we arrest or stop the cooking.

Do not put your beans in water that's not boiling.

They'll be in there too long and they'll probably get mushy.

We do this in restaurants

because we don't always have time

to cook the beans all the way through.

So, when we blanch them, we are parcooking them

and getting them ready for service.

This is a great tip at home,

if you're doing a big dinner for friends and family,

getting your greens and your vegetables parcooked

makes everything so much quicker.

Depending on the vegetable,

the final cook time could just be warming them

through or getting them hot.

The beans are gonna take at least a minute or two.

The best way to determine if our beans are ready

is to actually taste them.

Blow on it.

It's tender, but it still has a little bit of snap to it,

so these are coming out.

Drain them into your ice water.

When I blanch my green beans a day ahead,

I will take them out of the water, dry them off,

leave 'em on a towel, wrap them up, put 'em in the fridge.

Next day, they're ready to go.

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How many times have you had cherry tomatoes

or grape tomatoes for your salad and you're sitting there

trying to cut each one individually,

and then your hand starts to cramp up and you get tired?

I have a technique that we use in restaurants all the time.

I have two deli container lids.

If you don't have deli container lids,

you can use small plates.

Instead of cutting them individually,

we will take our cherry tomatoes,

put 'em on the deli container.

We take the other deli container and put it on top.

Hand on top, get our knife, slice.

Kinda saw through it.

Now we have seven or eight tomatoes cut in half

in no time at all.

So, I have a tomato right here

that is kinda nice, red-looking tomato,

but when you squeeze it, it is hard as a rock.

This is what my dad calls a cardboard tomato.

One thing we used to do when we had a tomato

that really wasn't ready to go,

literally, we put it on the window sill by the sink,

where it was a little warm, got a little sun,

and the tomato eventually would start

to kinda break down a little and get nice and soft,

much more tasty and much more acceptable.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of tomato skin,

but what I like to do is score the bottom

and you can take the core out.

But what I could do is blanch this

and then shock it in ice water

like we did with the green beans earlier.

The skin peels off super easy.

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When it comes to shopping for vegetables,

including zucchinis, I'm always looking

for something that's heavy for its size.

Bigger does not necessarily mean better with zucchini.

Sometimes, when you get a really giant zucchini,

the seeds are really kinda cottony

and you have to cut them out.

It doesn't have as much flavor.

It tends to be a little more on the watery side.

I actually like to choose a zucchini more around this size.

If I'm going for a bigger zucchini, I like this size.

I like the texture of the zucchini flesh.

I don't necessarily like the seed,

so I'll almost never cut my zucchini in rounds.

And when I see this at restaurants,

I always feel like someone's just got kind lazy for the day.

What I like to do with the zucchini is cut the ends off,

cut it in half, and then I cut it in half again,

flip it on its flat side, and then cut it into quarters.

And then what I do is I turn it on its back

and I cut out the seed pod.

This part of the zucchini tends to get spongy

and soft when it cooks.

I can't stand that.

You can always cut it smaller, like this,

or if you wanna be a little fancy,

you can cut it on angles.

It's like the best bite of the zucchini

without any of the soft weirdness in the middle.

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When you're shopping for asparagus, right,

one of the things you really wanna look for

when you're choosing it is that the tips

are nice and firm and, like, solid.

You see this tip?

That is a nice, firm tip.

It's not squishy, it's not soft.

Make sure the asparagus isn't too wiggly.

If most of the asparagus looks firm like this,

the tips are nice and dry and not squishy,

go for that bundle.

Now that we have our asparagus trimmed,

what am I gonna do with this?

It's a third of my asparagus.

I will make a soup or a puree out of this.

Not only will cooking soften the fibers,

if I have puree it and strain it,

I'm gonna have some great asparagus flavor

without using the whole asparagus.

So, what would be my trim or my waste

turns into something delicious.

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When you choose an artichoke in the store,

one thing you wanna look for, as with most vegetables,

is that they're heavy for their size.

If you squeeze it and it's spongy, chances are,

you have an artichoke that's gonna be a little dry,

it's not gonna have a big heart,

and it's not gonna be all that delicious.

You want it to be nice and firm.

Be careful when you squeeze,

because sometimes, there's spikes on there.

And don't get stuck.

Whenever I cut artichokes,

I usually wear some sort of glove.

After you trim two or three artichokes,

it will stain your hands

and it doesn't come off that easily.

I've also seen people that didn't wear gloves

that rub a little oil on your hands

so that it didn't stain as much,

but I think gloves are the best foolproof method.

Artichokes are one of those vegetables

that oxidize fairly quick,

and what we do for this is we get a bowl of water.

You want to put some acid in it.

Lemon juice works great and it keeps our artichokes

from oxidizing or getting black.

Another thing about artichokes is that there's a lot

of waste because you have a lot of leaves.

One thing that I like to promote is the stems.

This stem is a nice, chunky, meaty stem.

Don't throw this away.

Artichoke stems are delicious.

So, peel off the woody exterior

and cook it with your artichokes.

Don't waste your stems.

These pieces here,

you can see there's tons of fiber in them,

but that piece of artichoke stem

will be nice and tender when you cook it.

If you take all these techniques and hacks

and put them into your everyday cooking,

it's gonna save you time, energy, money, stress.

You're just gonna become a better cook all around.

If you have any vegetable hacks or tips that I missed,

put 'em down on the comments.