Food - Drink
The Way You Chop Your Vegetables For Tuna Salad Matters
By ABBY SMITH
If celery and onions are part of your go-to tuna salad recipe, the way you chop your vegetables might be affecting the salad's taste. Per Brendan Walsh, dean of culinary arts at the Culinary Institute of America, texture and mouthfeel can influence how we perceive flavor.
Per an experiment conducted by Cook's Illustrated, cutting an onion from end-to-end results in a milder flavor than cutting it in round slices — which produces the distinct, onion smell-causing substance known as thiosulfinate. Less cutting across the grain will, therefore, make for a milder onion in your tuna salad.
According to NPR, it's possible that aggressively chopping celery will cause bitterness due to the release of polyphenols. So, if you're more interested in the crunch of celery than its sometimes distinctive bitter flavor, slightly larger, gently cut pieces are better for your next tuna salad dish.