A chef’s tools, specif­i­cal­ly the chef knife, is con­sid­ered an ex­ten­sion of the chef him/her­self. Af­ter years of use and prac­tice, sea­soned chefs gain the abil­i­ty to use their knives with the flu­id­i­ty of a mas­ter painter’s brush stroke. On the oth­er hand, the av­er­age home cook may ca­su­al­ly chop or dice items the fastest way they can which of­ten re­sults in the fi­nal prod­uct lack­ing uni­for­mi­ty or con­sis­ten­cy. Pro­fes­sion­als prac­tice prop­er knife tech­niques for a few rea­sons in­clud­ing the fact that uni­form­ly cut items will al­so cook uni­form­ly, they are more vi­su­al­ly ap­peal­ing and re­sult in an over­all high­er qual­i­ty, end prod­uct.

To­day, we will go through the var­i­ous knife cuts with ex­pla­na­tions so you can up­grade both your kitchen skills and over­all ‘put-in-house-abil­i­ty’. The French are cred­it­ed with be­ing the first at for­mal­is­ing cook­ing as a pro­fes­sion­al skill and are tout­ed to have the best cui­sine in the in­dus­try. As a re­sult, clas­si­cal French cui­sine is most wide­ly taught as the ba­sis for culi­nary ed­u­ca­tion, hence culi­nary man­u­als use most­ly French terms for the var­i­ous tech­niques and skills. This means that by de­fault this is a bit of a French les­son as well, be­ing that the names of the cuts are French—lucky you.

Be­fore we go right in­to the tech­niques, it must be stat­ed that safe­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy are key in any kitchen en­vi­ron­ment and as such, there are prop­er ways in which to hold a knife. The hand which holds the knife should em­ploy some­thing known as the pinch grip. This en­tails hold­ing the blade of the knife, pinched be­tween the in­dex fin­ger and thumb, while the oth­er three fin­gers con­trol the han­dle of the knife. This al­lows more con­trol and ma­noeu­vra­bil­i­ty of the blade in ad­di­tion to be­ing more er­gonom­i­cal­ly favourable. The hand which holds the item to be cut should em­ploy a tech­nique known as the cat’s paw. This en­tails curl­ing the fin­gers in to­ward the palm while the blade re­mains an­nexed to the knuck­les, en­sur­ing that it is nev­er an­gled ei­ther in­ward or out­ward through­out the cut­ting process. The thumb must al­so re­main curled be­hind the fin­gers and is used to con­trol the item to be cut; whether to feed or re­treat it to or from the blade re­spec­tive­ly.

Com­bin­ing these tech­niques are of­ten­times un­com­fort­able at first but with prac­tice, it en­sures that one can work with the high­est de­gree of ef­fi­cien­cy and the most safe­ly.

The fol­low­ing are the var­i­ous knife cuts used in pro­fes­sion­al kitchens with ex­pla­na­tions and in some cas­es, di­men­sions of what the cuts should be ac­cord­ing to clas­si­cal French cui­sine.

Fine Juli­enne

This cut mea­sures 1/16 x 1/16 x 2 ½ inch­es. They are very fine strips of­ten used for gar­nish­es and items such as pota­toes, car­rots and cel­ery.

Juli­enne

This cut mea­sures ⅛ x ⅛ x 2 ½ inch­es. They are fine strips al­so used most­ly for gar­ni­ture be­cause of how del­i­cate they are.

Fine Brunoise (pro­nounced broon-wahz)

This cut is de­rived from the fine juli­enne and mea­sures 1/16 in x 1/16 in x 1/16 inch­es. These are the small­est cuts and are used for gar­nish­ing.

Brunoise

These are de­rived from the juli­enne and mea­sure ⅛ x ⅛ x ⅛ inch­es. Com­mon­ly used for gar­nish­ing as well, and may be seen in thin, clear soups such as con­som­mé.

Al­lumette

Al­so known as match­stick cuts, these mea­sure ¼ x ¼ x 2 ½ inch­es. This cut is usu­al­ly used on veg­eta­bles and en­sures that the item is cooked even­ly and quick­ly.

Mace­doine (small dice)

These mea­sure ¼ x ¼ x ¼ inch­es and are de­rived from the al­lumette cut. Again, this al­lows quick and uni­form cook­ing.

Ba­ton­net

These look like lit­tle sticks and is ac­tu­al­ly a crude trans­la­tion of the term. They mea­sure ½ x ½ x 2 ½ inch­es.

Par­men­tier (medi­um dice)

These are de­rived from the ba­ton­net and mea­sure ½ x ½ x ½ inch­es. It’s a good rule of thumb tech­nique to use when a recipe book doesn’t spec­i­fy ex­act­ly what size to dice items.

Carre (large dice)

These cubes mea­sure ¾ x ¾ x ¾ inch­es and may be used in hearty soups or oth­er items that al­low for a longer cook­ing time, con­sid­er­ing the size of this cut.

Paysanne

This word trans­lates in­to “peas­ant style” and are sim­ply even slices of an item in their nat­ur­al shape. There is an­oth­er train of thought that de­scribes the paysanne as be­ing slices of an item that has the shape of two straight sides that come to a point, while the oth­er side is round­ed but many chefs re­fute that de­scrip­tion.

Lozenge

This is a di­a­mond shape cut with the di­men­sions ½ x ½ x ⅛-inch­es. These can be used as gar­nish and help make at­trac­tive pre­sen­ta­tions when all are cut uni­form­ly.

Ron­delle

The ron­delle or “round” cut are even slices of a round item. Items such as car­rots, daikon radish and parsnips are of­ten cut with this tech­nique be­cause of their nat­u­ral­ly round shape. The slices may range be­tween ⅛ to ½ inch­es.

Tourné

Al­so known as ‘turns’, this is a cut that is con­sid­ered dif­fi­cult to mas­ter as the end prod­uct must have a bar­rel or rug­by ball shape with sev­en equal sides. Items cut in­to tourné are al­ways used in a vis­i­ble way in a dish be­cause of how much work it takes and how much wastage it has the po­ten­tial to cre­ate as there is a large amount of trim left be­hind af­ter shap­ing the item.

Chif­fon­ade

This cut is gen­er­al­ly used on leafy veg­eta­bles such as cab­bage, let­tuce or herbs. The tech­nique re­quires rolling a num­ber of leaves in­to a tight log shape, af­ter which they are fine­ly shred­ded us­ing a chef’s knife. All slices of the log must be uni­form and have a thick­ness of be­tween 1/16-inch to ⅛-inch.

There you have it; all the ba­sic knife cuts used in pro­fes­sion­al kitchens. While some may ar­gue that you can cut items in any num­ber of shapes and sizes, these are the ones most com­mon­ly used in clas­si­cal French cui­sine. There may be one par­tic­u­lar cut that I have left out—the French term used when one cuts one’s hand try­ing all these fan­cy tech­niques. I don’t know how to say it in French my­self but when it hap­pens the French words that im­me­di­ate­ly en­ter my mind are ex­ple­tives… and this is a fam­i­ly friend­ly news­pa­per.