Finely Shredding Ingredients

When a recipe calls for finely shredding an ingredient (usually a carrot for a salad or garnish or ginger), it doesn't require a four-sided box grater. Neither is it asking you to perfectly julienne.

All you have to do is cut the item on the diagonal into thin slices, a scant 1/8 inch thick. Note that when cutting the diagonal slices, the angle of your knife determines the overall length of the shreds. Then assemble the slices into several short stacks-flat side against the cutting board for stability, and use the "curled knuckles" approach to cut at 1/16 to 1/8-inch intervals for fine shreds.

The shreds will not be uniform in length, but that is fine because there's a lot of beauty in not having things always perfect. Finely shredded ingredients lend sparks of color to a dish. To have them all the same size would be awfully boring.

I recently purchase a couple of seemingly handy tools at my favorite Asian housewares shop. They were specifically made for shredding carrot and other rooty vegetables. I loved their plastic coloring and they were cheap -- 98 cents to $1.99. Here's how they fared against a knife:

The handled dragging tool make in Thailand was suppose to be great for carrots and green papaya but there were constantly times when the shreds didn't separate cleanly. Despite the convenience, it's a little awkward to firmly drag the shredded across the hard surface of a carrot. I've used similar expensive shredders made in Japan (those are about $10 and have very sharp, pointy toothed blades) and experienced the same awkwardness.

The pink one, which was textured to resemble wood, had holes that were too small. I got fine, wispy shreds more like the ones on American box graters. The interesting thing about the pink gadget was that the metallic blade was humped (curved), making the shredding process easier than a completely flat surface.

I think I'll stick with my cheap, multi-purpose Japanese vegetable knife for doing the fine shred.

Comments

[Rosa]

I generally do it with a knife, although I don't have such a Japanese beauty!...

[Rosa]

I generally do it with a knife, although I don't have such a Japanese beauty!...

[Nobody]

It is important not to use devices other than a sharp knife to finely chop up things such as carrots, daikon and jicama if you want them to retain their water content. Using graters and shredders will leave you with a soggy mess.

[Andrea Nguyen]

That's correct if you're using the typical box grater. If you look at the photo above -- which I did nothing to clean up -- there's no liquid. They constructed them in a way as to avoid the liquid.

[John]

What about for finely shredded cabbage? Is there a good tool for that or do you use your knife as well? How about mandolin shredder? Do those work well?

[Nobody]

Carrots are OK to use with those graters but I wonder if daikon and jicama might still get you into trouble. I also like using a knife so I don't get uniform strips.

[Andrea Nguyen]

Ack, you'd run into the problem you alluded to earlier. Daikon and jicama are full of water so they would weep (boo hoo) like crazy if you used the grater. Carrots are dense roots. There may be promise with green papaya, though.

[Andrea Nguyen]

I use a knife for finely shredding cabbage. Vietnamese and Thai cooks like to use a special knife/peeler (dao bao) to shave off thin shreds of cabbage and banana blossom, but I find the tool to be a bit awkward and hard to keep sharp. I'll posted something on dao bao...