Size Matters

When you are at your favorite restaurant, have you ever wondered how everything on the plate is cooked so evenly? Let’s say you order a plate of roasted chicken with roasted vegetables and grilled corn. For the purpose of this tip let’s focus in on the roasted vegetables. The roasted vegetables contain carrots, potatoes, red onion, sweet potato, turnips, yellow squash and zucchini with olive oil and herbs (more about this in a future article.) Notice that I picked vegetables with different density. How do we ensure that these vegetables are cooked perfectly? Size! Cut each vegetable to the same size. Why do this? To match the cooking time by creating more surface area to accept the heat from roasting. Simple additional trick: for the more dense vegetables, you can actually cut them slightly smaller, which will ensure these vegetables will finish at the same time as the others. Just remember, the next time you are cooking anything, that size really does matter.

For the purpose of this tip, I am going to cut up some different vegetables to the same size to demonstrate comparative sizes. Let’s start by setting up your cutting board, with towel, knife and vegetables.

Cutting board and vegetables

Determine the size needed for your dish. We are making a roasted vegetable dish, so bite-size would be proper for this dish. For example, if you were making a soup and cutting vegetables for mirepoix, diced would be a more appropriate size. Note: size is not only limited to vegetable and herbs, but protein as well. Let’s say you are making a stew, the meat should be cubed about the same size as the vegetables.

Finished vegetables. Notice carrots are slightly smaller in size

Notice how all of the vegetables are cut to the same size. Remember when someone says “size doesn’t matter,“ you can say “au contraire, it really does matter.”

Bon Appetit!