Mirepoix? But I hardly knew her!

Todays basic is a Mirepoix. While the word is a bit of a mouthful, it's a close relative of the "Holy Trinity" in cooking. This type of base is used in Cajun and French cooking quite often. It consists of carrots, celery, and onion. Sometimes you may hear it to be onion, celery + 1.

The basic idea is great! You take these 3 items, sweat them together in a pan to mingle their flavors, and put them in a dish like soup, beans, roasts and the like.

Here I chose my favorite, onion, carrot and celery. You can add more if you'd like your cooking to have more depth, but even a little bit of these items helps enrich lots of dishes!

Once your 3 chosen items are chopped up to however chunky or fine you'd like, just place a little bit of non stick spray in a pan, and set the top to medium low. We're not looking to cook these, just sweat them a little bit. The dish you add them to will soften the Mirepoix as it cooks releasing flavors as it does it's job.

This s the half way point. The onions are barely starting to lose their solid white color and are starting to turn a little translucent. This will take about 4 minutes total on medium low heat to sweat the Mirepoix. Once it's complete, just add it directly into your dish to be cooked and enjoy! 

1 Carrot chopped
1/2 Medium Onion chopped
1 Stalk of Celery chopped

You'll Roux the Day!

Ahhh the Roux! A decidedly French concoction, designed to thicken sauces and add richness to them.

The Roux works well with virtually any cream or cheese sauce that you wish to have a thicker consistency. You'll see this item used a lot in Cajun cooking, and in French cuisine. The ratio is about 1:1, so 1 tbsp fat (butter usually) and 1 tbsp flour.

I started with about 3 tbsp butter, and flour on a medium-low stove top setting. Don't crank up the heat, as butter has a fairly low smoke point, and will rapidly turn from yellow Noms, to separated water and burned fat in no time on high.

Why does this look good already? Oh yeah, butter!

Now, once the butter is melted and the flour is stirred together, it will form the start of a blonde Roux. The longer you cook the Roux, the darker and nuttier smelling it will become. Also, the less thickening power it has. So if you want a thick sauce, keep it blonde. If you want nuttiness, depth and a looser sauce, slowly stir the Roux for a few minutes longer and it will start to turn a darker shade of brown. Remember, slow and easy does it.

Bubbly goodness!

Since this is a blonde Roux, it will bubble a bit to make sure the flour is cooked and incorporated, and should have a slightly loose consistency, like a warm pudding before it sets up.

Once this is done you are ready to incorporate it into whatever dish you'd like. May I suggest an Alfredo sauce? You can use cornstarch for thickening, but the Roux adds richness and depth along with the thickness. One last thing, like cornstarch, make sure once your Roux is added to your sauce, bring it to a boil to maximize it's thickening power.

How to Dice an Onion

I didn't start off cooking the way I do now. I'm constantly learning new techniques, revisiting old attempts to see what works best for me. That being said, I've learned a few shortcuts to speed things up a bit. One of the handiest ones I've found is how to chop an onion.

Onions are all about chemical warfare. Once you pierce the skin, it starts to fight back by assaulting your eyes. There's various remedies out there (sunglasses, fans, dances ect) to help defeat this menace to harvest the delicious flavor of onions. Me personally, I strike fast and get it in the dish as soon as I can.

The delicious enemy, and my weapon of choice!

Now, as you've noticed here, I have removed the skin from the onion, and we're ready to strike. First, I cut this pole to pole, not across the "equator". Then, depending on the portion I want, I cut it down again. If you're using a whole, or multiple onions, cutting them in half is sufficient.

Take THAT!

Now, after I've chosen my chunk of onion, I place vertical cuts through the onion. You don't want to cut front to back completely, just about 3/4 from the edge of the onion. Otherwise the onion will fall apart and you'll be chasing onion parts over your board.

Next, I place my hand on top of the onion to prevent slippage, and slowly move my knife through the center of the onion in a horizontal movement. Move slow and keep your hands away from the blade! You'll want to keep your hand parallel to the blade, don't "cup" the onion! This won't take much force, so go easy the first few times you try this. The same distance is used here, about 3/4 through the onion. Any more than that, and you've made more work for yourself instead of speeding up the process.

Now you can chop down the onion as seen below. This creates a nice fine dice, about 1/4 of an inch cube of onion. You can do the previous steps in finer cuts to make a finer dice if you'd like. The last hunk of the onion that you didn't put slices through can be easily handled by 3-4 chops of your knife. With some practice, you can chop through an entire onion in about 30-45 seconds with ease. Exercise caution, be safe, and soon you'll be virtually tear free!