Slice Like a Chef: A Guide to Culinary Knife Cuts

One of the first things a student learns in culinary school is how to use a knife — in particular, to make the classic knife cuts used in cooking. 

You might think how you cut your ingredients doesn’t matter, but it does. When you’re a diner, how the vegetables are cut help show you how much quality, education, and care the cooks put into their food. If you’re cooking at home, the cook times in the recipe method are based on the size of the ingredients after they are cut. And it’s important to cut them the same size so the ingredients cook evenly.

Here’s what you should know about individual knife cuts, their dimensions, and how they are used in cooking.

Strip Cuts: Baton, Batonnet, and Julienne

This group of knife cuts indicates that the ingredients will be cut into 2 to 3 inch long strips with the outer perimeter square dimensions varying based on the size of each cut. These cuts are used for French fries, matchstick-cut vegetables used in rice paper rolls, or chives used as a garnish. In fine dining, the square dimensions are as close to perfect as they can be. The strips can then be further broken down into perfect little cubes to create a dice cut. 

The largest of the group is called a baton. This indicates that the 2- to 3-inch-long strip will have a perimeter size of 3/4 square inch. This cut can be used when preparing thick-cut French fries. From this cut, you get a large dice.

The next size down is called batonnet. This indicates that the 2- to 3-inch-long strips will have a perimeter size of 1/2 square inch. This cut can be used for celery or carrots on a crudité platter or thinner-cut French fries. From this cut, you get medium dice.

The next size down goes by a few different names. Most commonly it’s called julienne or matchstick cut but sometimes you’ll see this cut called allumette. In this cut, the 2- to 3-inch-long strip will have a perimeter size of 1/4 square inch. You’ll often see slaws with this style of cut. From this strip, you get a brunoise cut.

And finally, the fine julienne is a 2- to 3-inch-long strip with a square perimeter of 1/8 inch. A fine brunoise comes from a fine julienne. Sometimes you’ll see herbs or vegetables cut in this manner as a garnish on top of ramen or other dishes.

Dice and Brunoise

A dice is a perfectly square-cut ingredient that comes in a few different sizes. In culinary school, you teach you to break down the ingredient into one of the strip cuts first, then line up the strips and cut them crosswise into cubes. 

In fine dining, the dice must be perfect. During culinary training, it’s not uncommon for diced ingredients with slight imperfections to get thrown in the trash. At home, as long as you hit the approximate dimensions mentioned in the ingredient list, you’ll be fine.

A large dice come from cutting the baton into perfect 3/4-inch squares. This cut can be used for roasting vegetables or for the French dish, Pommes persillade.

A medium dice is one of the most common sizes. It comes from cutting the batonnet into 1/2-inch squares. This is a great cut for stew vegetables or when you want something to be bite-sized. If reading recipes at home, this might also be called “chopped”. 

A small dice comes from the julienne and is 1/4-inch square in size. Small dice can seem fussy but it truly does enhance the beauty of a pico de gallo or simple soup where you’ll see a nice mirepoix or aromatic base in the broth. This cut is also called “finely chopped”.

The matchstick or fine julienne cut comes from the precious brunoise, a tiny 1/8-inch square that you rarely see outside of fine dining. You might see this as a garnish on top of a dish, like very finely chopped cucumber and tomato on top of a gazpacho.

The smallest dice cut is 1/16 square inch or less in size and is called fine brunoise, or more commonly, mince cut. Minced garlic or very finely chopped chives are an example of this cut.

Chunky Vegetable Cuts

Outside the perfect square cuts of the strip and dice are a few more cuts reserved for heartier vegetables or more rustic preparations

Rondelle or paysanne cut is reserved for long round vegetables like carrots or zucchini and fruits like bananas. Rondelle translates to round and the cuts look like coins. Thinly slice the ingredient crosswise into anywhere between 1/8- and 1/2-inch-long slices, depending on what you are preparing.

Paysanne cut can also be used with non-round vegetables and is considered a rustic cut. Vegetables are thin-cut according to the shape of the ingredient.

To create the diagonal cut, you’ll begin the same way you would with the rondelle cut but instead rotate those same ingredients 45 degrees, then slice to create the cut.

The tournée cut is a rarely seen cut in the restaurant world, so if you see it, you should feel like you are being extra taken care of. A tourneé isn’t a cut that any chef can do, it's a technique painstakingly practiced over time. Often used for stew vegetables like potatoes, the vegetable is broken down into approximately 2 inches in length, with seven evenly spaced sides around the edges, some have flat tips or pointed tips but the circumference of the vegetable should be around 3/4 inch. This football-shaped cut can be created with a curved paring knife called a bird’s beak. If you don’t have a special curved knife, you can also practice this technique with a regular paring knife.

Herb cuts

When chopping herbs, it’s a good practice to be as precise as possible on the first pass. Repeated passes bruise the tender herbs, leaving them wilted. 

When you see the term “rough chop,” that indicates that there does not need to be perfect edges and the pieces should be somewhere approximately 1/4 to 1/2inch in size. This is great for a quick garnish on top of your meal and can be done with almost any tender herb. Remove thyme and rosemary from their woody stems, then rough chop the leaves.

A chiffonade cut is for tender leafy herbs like basil, mint, and parsley. Stack or roll the leaves, then very thinly slice the stack horizontally into thin strands. These thin strands look great as a garnish or add them into a dip.