This Soffritto Tip Will Save You So Much Time In The Kitchen

For many different recipes, before you add in any of the primary ingredients or unique seasonings, you have to get started by building a base of flavor with a blend of aromatic vegetables. While the staple ingredients remain the same, the name changes according to what type of cuisine you're making and the exact way you're preparing them. If you're whipping up a French dish, you'll want to start with a mirepoix, where all those diced vegetables are cooked in butter. For Italian cuisine, that blend of onions, celery and carrots, all sautéed to perfection in oil, is known as a soffritto.

As Italian Food Forever says, the word soffritto actually comes from the Italian word for "fried slowly" or "under-fried," which describes the way the aromatic base of ingredients are cooked in some oil until they're softened and flavorful. In a soffritto, the carrots, onion and celery are minced and cooked until all those flavors come together to provide a base for your recipe.

However, if the idea of finely mincing and cooking all those vegetables before you even touch any other ingredients in your recipe sounds like too much work for you, don't worry — there's an easy hack that you may want to consider. It will allow you to do all the work of creating a delectable soffritto just once, so you're able to use that staple component in many dishes without having to start from scratch every time.

While you certainly can make your soffritto fresh every time, you can also hack it by prepping a large batch of the minced, aromatic vegetable blend and simply storing it in the fridge, according to Canadian Living. Think of it kind of like that container of pre-minced garlic you might have nestled in amongst your condiments — it may not be as good as it's freshly minced alternative, but it'll still add some serious flavor to your dish, plus it's way more convenient when you're pressed for time. Then, whenever you want to get a recipe started with a soffritto, you can just take some of the already sautéed mixture and plop it in your pot or pan.

If you're looking to save even more time in the kitchen, another way to prep your soffritto involves doing all the chopping ahead of time, so at least you don't have to break out your knife and cutting board every time. As Italian Food Forever explains, you can actually freeze the chopped vegetables so you can just grab them and sauté them whenever they're needed. Soffritto requires a 1:1:1 ratio of onion, carrot, and celery, according to Italian Recipe Book, so you can either just measure out equal amounts of the frozen, minced vegetables, or you can simply combine them ahead of time and store it all in a big batch — it just depends on what best suits your cooking preferences.