Chop Bell Peppers 'Twice As Quick' With Gordon Ramsay's Zero-Mess Technique

Gordon Ramsay is regarded as one of the best chefs in the world, mostly thanks to his multiple Michelin-starred restaurants. Although he cooks complex dishes like beef Wellington, he has tips and tricks for basic food prep, too, such as cutting vegetables. Enter Gordon Ramsay's bell pepper technique, which turns this awkwardly shaped veggie into something much easier to manage.

Bell peppers come in all kinds of colors and flavors, but they all have that same lumpy shape. All you have to do is cut the stem off the top of the bell pepper. Then, flip it over so the stemless top is now face-down on your cutting board. From there, just slice the outside of the pepper, going all around the seeded center. You easily avoid the seeds, and you're left with several pieces of bell pepper that are ready to be sliced or chopped into smaller pieces. The best part of the technique is that the seeds stay contained by the roof of the pepper, so you don't have to worry about them getting all over your cutting board.

The purpose of Ramsay's technique is to create a mess-free pepper that's ready to slice, but in doing so, it also creates easy-to-cut pieces of pepper — all you have to do is lay them flat. From there, slice around the edges of each piece to even them out — this step is necessary if you're looking for perfectly even, same-sized cuts for presentation, but you can skip this step if you don't need them.

You can then place the pepper skin-side-down, so you're cutting through the actual pepper first and not its tougher skin, and begin the slicing or chopping process. If you're cutting peppers for chili, consider finely chopping them so they blend well with the other ingredients. If you're making a stir fry, slice them so they're more of a standout ingredient. Whether you want to julienne the peppers or baton-cut them, Ramsay's technique is certainly one of those best-kept secrets that makes this lumpy piece of produce much easier to work with.