Marc Murphy's Top Tip For Cooking French Food

Even if you're an excellent home cook, the phrase "traditional French cuisine" can feel intimidating to the best of us. Learning how to build a proper roux, making the key sauces, and perfecting the deglazing technique is overwhelming on its own — don't even get us started on soufflés and macarons! But taking the first step into French cuisine doesn't have to be so complicated. Chowhound spoke to celebrity chef and restaurateur Marc Murphy at the New York City Wine & Food Festival about beginner advice for French cuisine. Before diving headfirst into a complex recipe, Murphy recommends, "My first tip for any cooking is knife skills. Once you get knife skills down, you get much less intimidated by the cooking itself."

It seems simple, but knife skills are key for French cooking, and having the right technique increases efficiency while improving the appearance and texture of food. In French cuisine, there are a handful of cuts that are frequently called for in recipes. A julienne cut is to slice vegetables like carrots or parsnips into thin matchsticks, while a chiffonade is used to cut herbs and leafy greens into thin ribbons. A rough chop is called concassé, which is used for fruits and vegetables, especially tomatoes. Vegetables that have first been julienned can then be diced into small cubes called a brunoise.

As a chef or home cook, you learn from your mistakes. Let's be real — unless you're an Iron Chef, you're probably not going to whip up a perfect coq au vin the first time. Marc Murphy echoes this sentiment. "First of all, if you're going to cook, you got to mess it up," he said. "If you're a brain surgeon, you might not want to f*** it up, but if you're cooking, you can screw it up and it's okay." 

It's understandable if you want to start with something with less potential for error — classics like a French omelet may seem easy, but actually require a lot of technique. Murphy recommends beginning with a French soup to practice your knife skills. One option to start with is Julia Child's favorite, French onion soup. It's pretty easy to hide uneven chopping and slicing in a soup, making this dish a great choice for amateurs. A common base for many French dishes is a mirepoix, a blend of chopped carrot, celery, and onion. Try the brunoise cut for the mirepoix, which can be used as the base of soup, stew, sauces, and entrees.

Outside of soup, there are still plenty of French dishes that will help build up your confidence in cooking this cuisine. A vegetable-forward ratatouille gives you the opportunity for a lot of chopping practice. Potato dishes are also a good choice for something simple but always delicious; try creamy potatoes au gratin, or pommes persillade, cubed, seasoned, and sauteed potatoes.