Concasse is a French culinary technique used to remove skin and seeds from fruits and vegetables for use in sauces, soups, or salsa. Tomatoes are the most common candidate for concasse, and the process varies for each type of product. The same technique can also be used to turn spice blends into a single powder. Chefs typically learn concasse after mastering basic knife skills.
The concasse technique is among the most specialized chopping skills a chef can learn. Short for concasser, the French verb for “pulverize,” this culinary technique is used to remove the seeds and skin from some fruits and vegetables. These are then cubed clean and diced for use in sauces, soups, or salsa. This is also a French way of describing the process of turning a spice concoction into a single powder in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder.
Tomatoes are perhaps the most prominent candidate for treating concasse. The pulp has such a different texture from the flesh and the seeds are so regularly disdained. Other fruits and vegetables are peeled, seeded and diced, from apples and oranges to cucumbers and squash.
The concasse process will be slightly different for each type of product. For tougher vegetables and fruits, the skin can usually be removed with a vegetable peeler or by hand. For tomato, the process is different, as the skin is so delicate. First, the tomato is animated and marked on the bottom with an “X”. Then, the tomato is blanched, for just 10 or 15 seconds, in boiling water until the skin begins to peel.
To finish the concasse process on the tomato, it is cooled in ice water to stop the cooking process. Then, the skin is peeled off where the “X” was scored and the tomato is squeezed to remove the seeds inside. Once the seeds are gone, the tomato can be diced into small, uniform-looking cubes or pulverized with what’s known as a rough chop. To skip the blanching all together, fruit or vegetables can be peeled with a jagged peeler.
The same idea is behind another concave procedure for making a spice blend. Hard, whole spices such as peppercorns, star anise, allspice, cloves, and mustard greens can be tossed together in a grinder or mortar bowl. A pestle or grinder blades then turn the mixture into a single powdery mixture.
Chefs are more likely to learn the concasse method after they have perfected some of the basic knife skills. A rough cut doesn’t have an organized pattern, but a fine die or die takes some thought to get roughly equal sized pieces. To chop, cooks need to break fruits, vegetables, or herbs into tiny, same-sized pieces that will spread farther throughout a recipe. The julienne technique is used to add visual appeal, creating square strips the size of standard matchsticks.
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