The Tasty Reason Celery Should Always Be Cut On A Bias

High-fiber foods and vegetables, like celery, present an extra set of challenges to home cooks. You may want to use them for their nutritional value and flavor, but that extra dose of fiber can make them a little hard to eat.

A simple knife skill can make celery more attractive and palatable without requiring any extra time in the kitchen. The Houston Press once described a chef's knife as the most versatile tool you can have in your kitchen. A quality 8-inch or 10-inch chef's knife — and a few essential knife skills — can take you far. Knife skills make prep work a breeze, resulting in more aesthetically pleasing salads. Plus, your food will be more evenly cooked.

When it comes to honing your knife skills, there's no place to start like celery. Celery is a great way to add flavor and fiber to soups, sauces, casseroles, and salads. If you can master slicing celery, then you can handle just about any other high-fiber vegetable. Here's how to get started. 

Cutting celery on the bias, or diagonally, results in an elegant, tapered look. Mastering the bias cut is not difficult and adds an effortlessly stylish touch. But there are a couple of additional benefits to using a bias cut. A diagonal cut also exposes more of the vegetable's fibers, according to Food & Wine Culinary Director-at-Large Justin Chapple. This is especially beneficial when you consider the already delicate flavor of celery. By properly utilizing a bias cut, the vegetables will be more tender texturally. Therefore, you don't have to worry about leaving larger pieces, which can help bring a more celery-forward taste to your dishes. 

If your cuts are consistent so each slice is the same size and shape, any vegetable will also cook more evenly. This technique works especially well when you're slicing celery for sauces or soups, like our miso soup recipe. Doing this also means you can feature larger pieces of celery and other vegetables in your soups while retaining tenderness and wholesome flavor. While it may be tempting to prep in advance, be aware that cutting celery and other vegetables too far in advance can actually decrease their nutritional value (via Queensland Health).