Slicing on the Bias: What It Is and How to Do It
Some of recipes call for slicing foods such as carrots and scallions on the bias. What does that mean?
Foods cut on the bias are cut on the diagonal. Picture yourself slicing a peeled carrot into rounds. Instead of cutting perpendicularly to the length of the carrot to create rounds, or “coins,” you rotate either the knife or the carrot about 45 degrees to cut on the diagonal, producing elongated ovals with more surface area.
This type of cut is typical with longer foods such as carrots, baguettes, scallions, cucumbers, asparagus, zucchini, and summer squash. You can take this concept even further by angling the plane of your knife so that your cutting strokes hit the cutting board on the diagonal.
The bottom line: Slicing foods on the bias involves rotating and/or angling your knife to produce slices with more surface area.