Word of Mouth: Mirepoix

Mirepoix (mirh-pwah) noun. In French cooking, a mix of carrots, onions, and celery, usually finely diced, and used as the seasoning base for a meat dish or sauce.

A mirepoix is often the only seasoning we use for a good pot of beans, like the one we posted yesterday. But when we looked for a post mentioning mirepoix to link back to - nada! Oops. Mirepoix is one of the foundations of the classical Western kitchen, and we rely on it heavily in our soups and stews.

You probably do too - you may just not have known that it had this pretty French name. Mirepoix was actually named after a duke...

...Charles Pierre Gaston François de Lévis, Duc de Mirepoix (1699-1757), a French general and diplomat. Apparently his chef de cuisine named this standard cooking basic after his patron. It must have been in use before then, of course, but whether it was because of the chef's popularity or his personality, the name stuck.

Today, mirepoix is the holy trinity of French cooking. The traditional ratio of onions to celery and carrots is 2:1:1. These are usually finely diced and sautéed or simmered with the ingredients to let the aromatics flavor the whole dish.

A mirepoix au gras has a little meat added to the flavoring stage - perhaps some bacon cooked in oil with the aromatics, or a little ham.

(Image credit: Chef's Pencil - a great site with plenty of other good tips and recipes.)

Comments (11)

This post caught my eye, Faith. I appreciate the historical detail and love the little reminder - that the little things are also the most important. This indeed is part of what I love about French cooking.

This was a Quizzo question last time I played... "What ingredients are used in making the french dish Mirepox?"

Ha, we got it wrong...

Mirepoix is pronounced as a 2 syllable word.

mihr-PWAH

Also, the diced vegetables are sauteed in butter. (The most important part!)

Thanks Lucy!

You're going to have to correct my French dictionary, beckaroo! ;-) I suppose it is a glide between two and three syllables - they were probably adjusting for American ears.

Mirepoix is also sometimes roasted, when making a dark stock. The raw vegetables can be added directly to simmering water with chicken for a light stock too. But yes, for a cooked meat dish where it forms the base of flavor (as opposed to a stock) it is almost always sautéed.

And also known as "soffritto" in italian cooking. This is also the base for many many italian meat dishes (such as brasato or any beef stew) and a very good base for a simple risotto.
my mom used to prepare batches of soffritto and freeze them to have it always handy.
In italy, also, you can find little boxes of it at the market in the fozen section.

Try using it as a pasta sauce. its simple, it takes 5 minute and it makes a very nice fresh summery pasta dish. of course sprinkle with plenty of parmigiano.
ok.. now im officially hungry!

Trader joe's sells a premade mirepoix. It's in the section where they have the fresh herbs and salad greens....saves time on all the dicing.

This is the perfect base for a bean soup (navy beans, split pea). If you eat meat, sautee some cubed ham in the pan first, add the mirepoix, then add hot broth, beans, sage and a bay leaf.

My first thought was, "that's a soffritto". Interesting.

Fine dining restaurants will often use leeks or a combination of leeks and onions and the peel from celery root instead of celery when flavoring stocks.

A tiny dice or brunoise of mirepoix is a simple way to embellish a dish.

TJ's has soo much stuff that i cant NEVER FIND!!!! i'll look for it.