Slicing

Thickness sets everything downstream

Cooking time scales with roughly the square of thickness, so a slice twice as thick takes around four times as long. Slices of mixed thickness in one pan cook to different degrees, which is why unevenly sliced onions give burnt shreds and raw chunks together.

Thickness also decides the ratio of surface to interior. Thin slices are mostly surface — they brown, crisp and dry. Thick slices keep an interior and stay soft in the middle.

And for meat, the direction matters as much as the thickness: slicing across the grain cuts the fibres short, and the same piece of meat eats noticeably more tender than it does sliced along them.

Choosing a thickness

Paper-thin

Raw in a salad, cured, or crisped into a chip. Fennel, radish, courgette, potato, apple.

A few millimetres

Fast cooking — a stir-fry, a sauté, a quick pickle, a gratin.

Around a centimetre

Roasting and grilling. Enough interior to stay moist, enough surface to brown.

Thick, two centimetres or more

Steaks, chops and vegetable steaks. A window between crust and overcooked centre.

Meat, across the grain

Always. Look for the lines running through the meat and cut at right angles to them.

Meat, on the bias

At an angle rather than straight down, which gives wider slices and shorter fibres at once.

Slicing evenly by hand

1. Cut a thin slice off one side of anything round so it sits flat and cannot roll.
2. Use a sharp knife long enough to cross the food in one stroke. Sawing gives uneven slices.
3. Use the claw grip on the guiding hand, with the knuckles against the blade as a fence.
4. Move the guiding hand back by the thickness you want between each cut, rather than moving the knife.
5. Slice in one smooth forward-and-down motion, letting the length of the blade do the work.
6. For meat, find the grain before you start and turn the piece so you are cutting across it.
7. For a long vegetable, cut it into manageable lengths first rather than reaching across the board.

When to use a mandoline

• For consistency at very thin settings. Nobody hand-slices potato for a gratin as evenly as a mandoline does.
• For quantity. A tray of thin fennel or radish is minutes with one and a long job without.
• For crisps, gratins, slaws and carpaccio-style presentations, where evenness is the whole point.
• Always with the guard, or with a cut-resistant glove. Mandoline injuries are common, deep and sudden.
• Never for the last piece. Stop while there is still a substantial piece to hold, and use the offcut elsewhere.
• Not for soft or fibrous things. Tomatoes, cooked meat and stringy celery all defeat it.
• A food processor slicing disc does the same job faster, less evenly, and far more safely.

Common questions