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A typical walk down any supermarket aisle is quick to reveal how averse we are as Americans to doing work in the kitchen. Everything from onions to carrots comes pre-diced and ready for the pot. Stir-fry packs with onion, peppers, and mushrooms are plastic wrapped awaiting canned sauce and choice of meat. Salads even are packaged as “kits” complete with croutons, dried fruit, nuts, and dressing. With so many vegetable choices requiring so little work outside of package unwrapping skills you think we would be eating vegetables all the time. And still it feels like twisting arms to get greens into the hands and mouths of Americans.
It is a fact, preparing most vegetables requires a degree of effort. The size of that effort depends on the vegetable at hand and the tools involved. Properly equipping oneself with the right tools for the task at hand has the potential for making the work involved with prepping vegetables not only fast, but dare I say, more enjoyable too.
At the basic level, preparing most vegetables involves slicing, and dicing. Good knives are an absolute must. Sure, I’ve watched as an old Chinese grandmother prepared a meal for me using nothing more than a machete, but most of us will be more comfortable with a blade that is a little easier to handle. Forget the block set, if you have nothing else a large chef’s knife and a paring knife will tackle just about every cutting job. Just choose high quality steel and treat them with care. Regularly sharpening knives keeps them in your control for faster and more efficient work with less chance for loss of blood.
Before slicing and dicing, some vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, and turnips also require a good peel. I am a fan of the Swiss style peeler for its ergonomic grip, quick slice, ultra sharp blade, and thin peels. This device is so ingenious it is hard to believe that for a starting price of about $3.50, every kitchen in America doesn’t have one by now.
A huge part of making vegetables appealing to eat is playing with shape and size which in turn, makes them more interesting to the eye and the mouth. Sure you can spend hours making a perfect julienne of carrots by hand, or slicing eggplant into paper-thin rounds for pasta-less lasagna, or you can do what the chefs do and bust out a mandoline.
A mandoline is a slicer that sets up at an angle on the countertop and with the help of removable blades, creates professional quality vegetable slices in seconds to the dozens of minutes that creating a julienne of carrot by hand would require. These perfect matchsticks of vegetables can be stuffed in a bun with barbecued pork and pickled cucumber slices (using the straight blade on the slicer) for banh mi, Vietnamese sandwiches. Or bunches of julienned carrot, zucchini, and squash can make a bed for red snapper fillet in a parchment paper packet baked in the oven for a restaurant quality presentation for a fraction of the work.
If time is money and you think prepping vegetables requires too much of your time, a food processor might just be the best return on your dollar. Have a bunch of vegetables going old in the bin and are thinking about a soup? Run everything through the food processor for a quick chop and transfer to pot for minestrone. Want to make a salsa as a healthy topping to fish or chicken? A whiz in the food processor reduces a half hour of chopping to a few seconds. A recent Amazon search showed the Cuisinart DLC-2009 CHB 9 cup prep processor (4.5 stars out of 5) going for $136. If you used this just twice a week for a year, and the twice a week reduced your prep time by 1 hour per week, then the cost of that food processor for the year equals out to about $2.62 per hour, less than the cost of a morning latte.
Even if eating vegetables can seem like a chore, cooking them shouldn’t have to be. A good tool is more than a gadget, it is designed to take hard work out of the job at hand. When that job is cooking, a slick new knife or cool mandoline might be the thing that gets those greens out of the plastic, into the pan, and onto the dinner plate.
©2025 CDKitchen, Inc. No reproduction or distribution of any portion of this article is allowed without express permission from CDKitchen, Inc.
To share this article with others, you may link to this page:
https://www.cdkitchen.com/cooking-experts/amy-powell/1097-vegetable-prepping-tools/
Tools of the Vegetable Trade
A typical walk down any supermarket aisle is quick to reveal how averse we are as Americans to doing work in the kitchen. Everything from onions to carrots comes pre-diced and ready for the pot. Stir-fry packs with onion, peppers, and mushrooms are plastic wrapped awaiting canned sauce and choice of meat. Salads even are packaged as “kits” complete with croutons, dried fruit, nuts, and dressing. With so many vegetable choices requiring so little work outside of package unwrapping skills you think we would be eating vegetables all the time. And still it feels like twisting arms to get greens into the hands and mouths of Americans.
It is a fact, preparing most vegetables requires a degree of effort. The size of that effort depends on the vegetable at hand and the tools involved. Properly equipping oneself with the right tools for the task at hand has the potential for making the work involved with prepping vegetables not only fast, but dare I say, more enjoyable too.
At the basic level, preparing most vegetables involves slicing, and dicing. Good knives are an absolute must. Sure, I’ve watched as an old Chinese grandmother prepared a meal for me using nothing more than a machete, but most of us will be more comfortable with a blade that is a little easier to handle. Forget the block set, if you have nothing else a large chef’s knife and a paring knife will tackle just about every cutting job. Just choose high quality steel and treat them with care. Regularly sharpening knives keeps them in your control for faster and more efficient work with less chance for loss of blood.
Before slicing and dicing, some vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, and turnips also require a good peel. I am a fan of the Swiss style peeler for its ergonomic grip, quick slice, ultra sharp blade, and thin peels. This device is so ingenious it is hard to believe that for a starting price of about $3.50, every kitchen in America doesn’t have one by now.
A huge part of making vegetables appealing to eat is playing with shape and size which in turn, makes them more interesting to the eye and the mouth. Sure you can spend hours making a perfect julienne of carrots by hand, or slicing eggplant into paper-thin rounds for pasta-less lasagna, or you can do what the chefs do and bust out a mandoline.
A mandoline is a slicer that sets up at an angle on the countertop and with the help of removable blades, creates professional quality vegetable slices in seconds to the dozens of minutes that creating a julienne of carrot by hand would require. These perfect matchsticks of vegetables can be stuffed in a bun with barbecued pork and pickled cucumber slices (using the straight blade on the slicer) for banh mi, Vietnamese sandwiches. Or bunches of julienned carrot, zucchini, and squash can make a bed for red snapper fillet in a parchment paper packet baked in the oven for a restaurant quality presentation for a fraction of the work.
If time is money and you think prepping vegetables requires too much of your time, a food processor might just be the best return on your dollar. Have a bunch of vegetables going old in the bin and are thinking about a soup? Run everything through the food processor for a quick chop and transfer to pot for minestrone. Want to make a salsa as a healthy topping to fish or chicken? A whiz in the food processor reduces a half hour of chopping to a few seconds. A recent Amazon search showed the Cuisinart DLC-2009 CHB 9 cup prep processor (4.5 stars out of 5) going for $136. If you used this just twice a week for a year, and the twice a week reduced your prep time by 1 hour per week, then the cost of that food processor for the year equals out to about $2.62 per hour, less than the cost of a morning latte.
Even if eating vegetables can seem like a chore, cooking them shouldn’t have to be. A good tool is more than a gadget, it is designed to take hard work out of the job at hand. When that job is cooking, a slick new knife or cool mandoline might be the thing that gets those greens out of the plastic, into the pan, and onto the dinner plate.
Red Snapper in White Wine with Julienned Vegetables
Made with chayote squash, zucchini, carrot, red snapper fillets, salt and pepper, white wine, butter, thyme
Made with chayote squash, zucchini, carrot, red snapper fillets, salt and pepper, white wine, butter, thyme
Serves/Makes: 4
- 4 red snapper fillets
- salt and pepper
- 2/3 cup white wine
- 4 tablespoons butter, divided
- 4 sprigs thyme
- 1 small carrot
- 1 medium zucchini
- 1 small chayote squash
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Remove any pin bones from the fish. Season fish on both sides with salt and pepper. Lay fish out in a single layer in a baking pan not much bigger than the fish when laid out side by side.
Pour in wine and dot fish with half the butter. Top each fillet with a sprig of thyme. Cover the dish tightly with foil and place in oven. Cook for about 12-15 minutes until fish is flaky and cooked through.
Meanwhile, working with a mandoline or by hand with a knife, cut peel carrot and cut into a julienne. Julienne zucchini. Peel chayote and remove pit. Julienne chayote.
Bring a small pan of salted water to a boil. Blanch carrots for 1 minute and remove with a slotted spoon. Blanch Chayote for 1-2 minutes until tender and remove with a slotted spoon.
Heat remaining butter in a medium saute pan. Add zucchini with a pinch of salt and pepper. Saute for a minute then add blanched carrot and chayote. Cook for another 1-2 minutes tossing veggies until heated through and crisp tender.
When fish is done cooking, arrange each fillet over some julienned vegetables and serve with rice or starch of choice.
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©2025 CDKitchen, Inc. No reproduction or distribution of any portion of this article is allowed without express permission from CDKitchen, Inc.
To share this article with others, you may link to this page:
https://www.cdkitchen.com/cooking-experts/amy-powell/1097-vegetable-prepping-tools/