Kitchen Skills

Sharpen Your Knife Skills

From dicing onions to tackling tomatoes, hone your skills and use the vegetables in a go-to Spanish sofrito.

BY JASON ROSS

Sometimes without even knowing what I am making for dinner, I nd myself dicing an onion. It is central to so many dishes that it is the place where dinner begins. With that in mind, let’s run through a little knife skills check-up for dicing a variety of vegetables you probably already have at home, including the onion. Then, use those sharpened knife skills to make Spanish sofrito, which is a avor base that, like the diced onion, is the rst step in so many meals. The next time you are not sure what’s for dinner, just start dicing and see what happens.

Make sofrito into your go-to avor base and use it to make meals all week long. This fragrant tomato-based blend of herbs, spices, and vegetables is used to season countless dishes. Add it to cooked beans with a little broth for more delicious beans. Add chicken and seafood to the rice recipe here and you have the basics of a classic paella, minus the sa ron. Any brothy soup would be improved with sofrito. Cook ground beef with sofrito and a little wine and water, and you have the makings of a great meat sauce. Or add roux and you might be inspired to make all types of gumbos. The uses for sofrito are long and plentiful. Who doesn’t like more avor?

Red Rice Flavored with Sofrito

MAKES 4 TO 6 SERVINGS

Here is a recipe for fl avorful red rice to show off all your knife skills. Start by making a sofrito base to fl avor and color the rice. Then crank up the heat a little for a brown and crusty bite where the rice sticks to the pot.

2 tablespoons olive oil 1 onion, diced small 2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced 1 rib celery, diced small ½ red pepper diced small 1½ teaspoons salt 2 medium tomatoes, diced small ½ cup canned crushed tomatoes, with juice 1½ cups long grain white rice 2 cups water ½ tablespoon unsalted butter (optional)

1. Using a medium-sized pot with a tight-fitting lid, heat the oil on medium-low heat, and add the onions, garlic, celery, and red pepper. Sprinkle in the salt and cook for about 10 to 15 minutes stirring occasionally until the vegetables are softened, translucent, and just starting to brown. Look for browning around the edges of the pan. 2. Add the tomatoes and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes, scraping up any brown bits stuck to the edges of the pan. Look for a jammy consistency with most of the liquid from the tomatoes cooked out and the edges of the pan starting to brown again.

3. Then add the crushed tomatoes and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes until the tomato sauce shifts color from bright red to brick red, and the moisture in the sauce has mostly evaporated, thickening the sofrito. 4. After all the cooking, browning, and reducing, this is a good time to taste the sofrito and add salt if needed for your tastes. The sofrito can be made and stored in a covered container for up to 5 days in the refrigerator, or even made in larger batches and used for multiple preparations throughout the week. 5. Stir the rice into the sofrito and coat all the grains with sofrito. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook the rice stirring for 1 to 2 minutes until very lightly toasted and the pan has gotten hot. 6. Gently pour in the water and bring to a

boil. Do not stir. This helps to get a little crust on the bottom of the pan. As it comes to a boil add the optional butter for a richer, slightly wetter feeling rice or omit for sharper flavor. Cover and lower heat to lowest setting. Cook for 20 minutes. 7. Turn off heat, and leave covered on the burner for another 10 minutes. Uncover and serve. Make sure to use a wood spoon and scrape off the crust, with a bit of crust for each guest. 8. The rice is best served immediately or kept warm in a rice cooker, slow cooker, or an oven set to 180°F and served within a few hours.

Nutrition (per serving without optional

butter): Calories: 240, Fat: 5g (Sat: .5 g), Cholesterol: 0 mg, Sodium: 660 mg, Carb: 44g, Fiber: 3g, Sugar: 4g, Protein: 5g

Small Diced Vegetables

Here is a review of small dicing some common vegetables that you can use in a great variety of meals, and they are part of the recipe for sofrito used in the red rice. The focus here is small dice but you can use the same technique for any size: Small is ¼-inch dice; medium is ½-inch; and large is ¾-inch.

Onion

1. Using a chef’s knife, cut the onion in half from root to sprout end. 2. With onion cut side down on a cutting board, trim off the sprout end (leave the root end intact) and peel the halves. The root end will keep the onion from splitting and falling apart and will be useful toward the end of cutting as a safe place to keep your fingers while you finish cutting. 3. Make 3 to 4 horizontal cuts, about ¼-inch apart, from the trimmed sprout end to the root end, stopping your cuts a little shy of the end, and not going all the way through, leaving the root end intact. Then make similar size cuts straight down to the cutting board from sprout end to root stopping a little shy of the root end. 4. Finally, make ¼-inch cuts across the grain of the onion and through the horizontal and vertical cuts. Use the root end as a resting place for your fingers as you get toward the end of your cuts. Then discard the root end after you are done with your dice.

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