The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

I snapped every one of these stalks with my hands,
holding each one of them at the exact same point,
and was still able to make them break wherever I
wanted them to—quite easily, I might add. Far
better is to line them up, determine where most of
the stalks appear to become woody (the stalk will
begin to fade to white at that point), and then slice
them all at once with a knife, picking out any outliers
and trimming them as necessary on a case-by-case
basis.