Make This Classic French Base and Use It Everywhere
There is no shortage of jargon in the culinary world, and sometimes it feels like a completely different language. While I enjoy learning a little French or Javanese, learning the meaning of a recipe name or technique can improve your cooking. By improvement, I also mean improvisation. By learning some of the basics of cooking from around the world, you will be able to cook your own meals according to your preferences and needs. Most likely, you have already made this popular database and did not even know that it had a name. Well, it is. And his name is mirapua.
Mirepoix is a popular French term for a fragrant mixture of onions, carrots and celery lightly cooked in butter or vegetable oil. That’s all. (When I said base, that’s what I meant.) But what is that base? These three vegetables can be underestimated and ignored. It’s easy to take them for granted because they’re often available, cheap, and we see them in everything from canned soups to pies. This in itself is the moment of the light bulb. Mirepois is present in everything. It’s a fantastic combination of humble, powerful ingredients with a versatile flavor and aroma. It’s how you create the base of flavor, or literally the base of ingredients, for a variety of sauces, stews, and broths.
Making a classic mirapua is a simple procedure. You will need onions (any onion, red, yellow, or shallots will do), carrots, and celery in a 2:1:1 ratio, respectively. The most accurate way to do this is by weight, but part of the beauty of cooking is flexibility, so it’s all good if you look at that. For example, if you have two cups of chopped onions, you will need one cup of chopped carrots and one cup of chopped celery. Peel and prepare onions and carrots for slicing. (The celery doesn’t need to be peeled, but you can remove the strings from it .) Chop up the three ingredients and add them to the pot with a little oil to coat them lightly. Cook over low to medium-low heat until the ingredients are soft. They will release their flavors, some sugar and water. Ingredients generally do not brown, so you should prepare the next cooking steps before this happens.
Ingredients can be cut into a coarse chop or minced for faster preparation. I usually leave mirapua in my recipes because I usually make soup or stew and it works, but if you’re just flavoring the broth you can cut the trio into larger pieces and strain them at the end. Regardless of size, be sure to cut everything the same size so they cook at the same speed.
Aroma is the first thing that catches your eye when preparing ingredients; it is sweet, spicy, warming and the perfect addition to any savory meal. Although the following recipe uses the classic ratio I mentioned above, you can modify it to your liking. Make equal portions or add more celery to enhance the earthy notes. Remember mirapua is the base, so try adding other ingredients. Use it as a starting point for creating flavorful, well-balanced meals.
mirepoix
Ingredients:
- 1 cup chopped white onion
- ½ cup chopped carrots
- ½ cup chopped celery
- 1 tablespoon butter
In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter. Add chopped onions, carrots and celery. Stir to coat vegetables in oil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are soft and celery and onion are translucent.
At this point, you can turn this into a soup, stew, chili, or sauce. For soups, stews, and chilies, add any protein to the flavors to enhance the flavor, then any leftover vegetables such as chopped potatoes or beans, and then stock or broth. If you’re making a sauce, use your existing butter, or add more if needed, and add flour to start the dressing. Mirepoix will make the sauce coarse, but the vegetables will turn into sauce once you add the liquid ingredient. Don’t be afraid to be weird; There are very few savory dishes that don’t benefit from this classic French base.