Whether you're a home cook or a professional chef, familiarizing yourself with various kitchen knife techniques is invaluable. Understanding and mastering knife cuts and knife skills can enhance your cooking skills and significantly improve your finished product.
This comprehensive guide aims to provide details on essential kitchen knife cutting terms and cooking terms, empowering you to navigate new recipes with ease. By honing your ability to execute these fundamental cuts, you'll not only elevate your food presentation but also refine your skill in blending flavors creatively.
Below, we offer an easily accessible reference to the essential culinary cutting terms, designed to sharpen the skills of both aspiring home cooks and seasoned professional chefs alike.
Chop
Chopping is an imprecise action where you cut ingredients into large to bite-sized pieces, without worrying about strict uniformity or shape. Chopping is useful for a wide range of ingredients such as roots and other vegetables for rustic dishes and presentation.
Slice
With slicing, you are simply cutting ingredients into thin pieces, with long strokes in one direction. Anything from bread to cooked meats and raw fish are sliceable.
Mince
Your goal with mincing is to cut up the ingredients into fine, even pieces. Minced pieces are probably the smallest you will produce with a knife. Use this skill to cut ingredients with strong flavors that you want to infuse in a dish. Garlic and ginger are common examples. You may also mince other vegetables like onions, carrots and celery when you want them to cook down and be invisible in the final result.
Cube
When making cubes, make even cuts first in one direction, then in another that is perpendicular to the first. You want to form cube-shaped pieces of your ingredient that are the same size. The exact dimensions can vary based on what a dish calls for, but cubes are generally on the larger side, similar to chopped pieces. Meat and potatoes are common ingredients that you may cube.
Dice
Dicing involves a technique similar to cubing, yet it is distinguished by the size of the pieces it produces, which are typically a fraction of an inch. This method can be categorized into large dice, medium dice, and small dice, each defining the precision and size of the cut. Large dice are roughly ¾ inch cubes, medium dice are about ½ inch, and small dice are finer, around ¼ inch. Onions and carrots are commonly prepared in diced form, varying from large to small dice depending on the recipe's requirements.
Julienne
The Julienne cut is also known as the French cut. Julienning calls for a chef to cut an ingredient into uniform, long pieces that are reminiscent of matchsticks. It’s effective for firm, solid vegetables, such as zucchini, cucumbers, carrots, and potatoes.
Batonnet
The Batonnet cut is from French for ‘little stick’. The resulting cuts are ¼ inch x ¼ inch and 2- 2 ½ inches long. It’s the size you might find for carrots sticks or french fries, or a first step before cutting and ingredient into a small dice.
Chiffonade
A Chiffonade cut is mostly use to create garnishes. You roll up leafy ingredients, then cut them to form thin, long, ribbon-like pieces. You may chiffonade herbs such as mint and basil, or leafy vegetables like lettuce, spinach and collard greens.
Paysanne
Paysanne cuts, refer to rustic or ‘country style’ cuts that are typically used for home cooking. It allows the natural shape of the produce to show, for example, a carrot is thinly sliced without being ‘squared off’ and the rounded natural shape is preserved.
Brunoise
A brunoise cut is one where an ingredient is broken into squares, similar to cubes and dices. However, brunoise cuts are even smaller than dices. To make them, you first julienne an ingredient, then make close cuts perpendicular to the original julienne direction. Performing a brunoise is suitable for harder vegetables.
Tournée
Tournée, meaning ‘turned’ in French, is a cutting technique that results in small 7- sided football shaped pieces. Most commonly used for potatoes, it is also used for other hard root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips or turnips.
Choosing the Right Tools for the Job
Japanese knives are designed with a specific task in mind. Below you’ll find our most useful all purpose shapes and sizes. Choosing a knife that is the correct size and shape, for a specific ingredient will make prepping easier and your work will be more efficient. Below you’ll find some of our most popular all purpose knives..
Knife Selection
- Chef's Knife: The most all purpose knife in the collection. Can be used to prep larger vegetables and well as cooked and raw proteins. Shop our Gyutou Collection.
- Utility Knife: Smaller than a gyutou, the petty knife is great for smaller fruits and vegetables as well as detailed work like chopping delicate herbs, Shop our Petty Knife Collection.
- Santoku Knife: A medium sized all purpose knife, named for it’s ‘three virtues,’ cutting meat, vegetables and fish with equal precision. A little shorter than a gyuto, with a taller blade, great for vertical chopping. Shop our Santoku Collection.
- Bread Knife: Bread knives are a great serrated option to slice bread and pastry without crushing the delicate structure. Shop our Bread Knife Collection.
The Importance of a Sharp Knife
- A sharp knife ensures precision and safety in the kitchen. Some people can feel intimidated by a sharp knife, a dull knife requires more force and is therefore more likely to slip and cause damage. A well sharpened knife should cut smoothly and cleanly. Japanese knives should be sharpened periodically on a whetstone. View our Ultimate Guide to Knife Sharpening for more information on how to get started.
Cutting Board Selection
- A soft rubber, synthetic or end grain wood cutting board will extend the life of your blade’s edge. Avoid bamboo, hard plastic or glass cutting boards, they offer too much resistance and can damage the razor sharp edge of a Japanese knife. We carry an extended line of sanitizable cutting boards appropriate for home or professional use.
Organizational Tools: Bowls and Containers
- Aside from a very sharp knife, one of the best tools for organizing yourself in the kitchen is to set up your station in the professional way. Having all your ingredients or ‘mise en place’ ready to go will make cooking quicker and more efficient. We stock a wide range of prep tools in our stainless mise en place collection. Choose a size that corresponds to the number of ingredients you reach for most.
Master the precision of your cuts with high-quality, handmade kitchen knives from Chubo Knives. We stock a wide range of products for specific purposes, including Japanese Chef Knives, so you can prepare food in the most efficient way possible.