Clean, rinse, and cut: the five-minute groundwork
Grit at the leaf base, leaves into ribbons, stems into diagonal slices: the groundwork takes five minutes when you do it in the right order.
Every single silverbeet recipe begins with the same invisible job: turning a bunch into clean, dry, properly cut parts. Done in the wrong order it takes a quarter of an hour and leaves grit in the food. Done in the right order it takes five minutes, and the order is always the same: separate, rinse, dry, cut.
Step by step
- 1
Separate leaf from stem
Hold the stem in one hand and pull the leaf off with the other, or fold the leaf in half and cut along the midrib. Tearing is fastest; the knife gives a neater edge. Leaves under ten centimetres can keep their stems.
- 2
Rinse in a bowl, not under the tap
The grit sits down at the leaf base and in the grooves of the stem. Submerge everything in a large bowl of cold water, swish it around, and lift the leaves up out of the water rather than pouring it off. The grit stays behind on the bottom. Repeat with fresh water until the bowl comes up clean.
- 3
Dry thoroughly
Salad spinner or a clean tea towel. Wet leaves spit in hot oil and steam instead of frying, and wet leaves never make crisp chips.
- 4
Cut the leaves into chiffonade
Stack the leaves, roll them into a tight cigar, and cut into ribbons one to two centimetres wide. Even ribbons wilt evenly, and that is the whole point of the cut.
- 5
Slice the stems on the diagonal
Diagonal cuts of half a centimetre to a centimetre give more frying surface and prettier pieces. Coarse autumn stems may need their strings pulled off first, as on a celery stick.
- 6
Keep the parts separate
Stem and leaf go into the pan at different times, so leave them in separate piles. Anything heading into storage is stored separately too.
Pro tips
- Never wash silverbeet before storing it, only before using it. Surface moisture is the most common cause of slimy leaves in the fridge.
- Facing a whole crate, clean everything in one go: cleaned, dry leaves in an airtight box keep for three or four days and make the rest of the week fast.
- Limp leaves come back to life in ice water in ten minutes.
- Don't discard small or crooked leaves; they vanish without a trace into batter, soup, and pesto.
Troubleshooting
- There's still grit crunching between my teeth. What went wrong?
- You probably rinsed under running water instead of in a bowl. The grit needs time to sink: submerge the leaves in plenty of cold water, wait half a minute, and lift them out. Repeat with clean water until the bottom of the bowl is free of grains.
- The leaves turn dark and bruised along the cut edge.
- Your knife is too dull. A dull knife crushes the cells instead of cutting them, and the edge oxidises quickly. Use the sharpest knife you own, or tear the leaves by hand.
- The stems are stringy no matter how neatly I cut.
- Late in the season the coarsest stems develop strings, just like celery. Pull them off with a small knife from the base upwards before cutting, or send the coarsest stems to stock, pickling, or fermenting instead.