Shelf · Knife & prep · No heat
Butterflying
Slicing almost all the way through a thick piece and opening it out flat like a book.
Why it works
Cooking time does not scale with weight, it scales with thickness — and roughly with the square of it. Halving the thickness cuts the time by far more than half, and the outside no longer has to overcook while the centre catches up.
The tell
The opened piece lies flat under its own weight with no thick hinge, and the two halves are close to the same thickness.
How it fails
Cutting fully through gives you two pieces instead of one flat one — stop about a centimetre short of the far edge. If one half is much thicker, flatten it gently rather than trimming, or that half is still the one that lags.
In the app, the card opens on the recipe step that names it, with the tell drawn.
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