As an avid watcher of cooking competition shows, I’ve always enjoyed learning all the different technical cooking terms. I find amusement in using them in normal conversation and having people ask me what I’m talking about. One such piece of jargon I like bringing up is the names of different knife cuts.
Perhaps you already know what to do if a recipe calls for chopped onions (cut into pieces), minced garlic (finely chopped), or diced tomatoes (cut into cubes). But if you’re looking to level up your knife skills, look no further than these three more technical knife cuts!
1. Chiffonade
In French, “chiffon” means rag or cloth, making “chiffonade” literally translate to “made of rags.”
You usually chiffonade herbs like mint or sage and greens like spinach, lettuce, or cabbage. To give a more visual comparison, imagine cutting them into little “ribbons”, or long thin strips. Aside from looking pretty, they are used as a good way to sprinkle in the flavor of whatever you cut so that it is evenly distributed around the dish. If you think you’ve never seen this before, just think back to pizzas and pasta dishes you’ve ordered at restaurants. Chances are they were garnished with a chiffonade of basil. If you’ve ordered salads on the more gourmet side, the greens in them may have been chiffonade as well. Chiffonade-cut herbs can also be found mixed into dipping sauces.
This goes for attempting any knife cuts no matter the difficulty, but your first step should always be making sure you are using a sharp knife. At best, a dull knife may not be able to completely cut through whatever you are cutting properly, and at worst, you could injure yourself.
To chiffonade, start by stacking just enough leaves to be able to roll them into a tight tube, just not too tight that it crushes or tears the natural fibers. While holding that in place, take your knife and start slicing crosswise to produce thin strips. Once you reach the stem at the center of the leaf, flip the leaves over (still keeping them rolled) and repeat on the other side. You should be left with just the central stem, of which you discard.
If ever you have a leaf that has a thicker stem, you can either make sure you don’t cut into it while it’s rolled up or just opt to use it for something else.
2. Julienne
Out of the three knife cuts in this list, the julienne cut was the one I knew the best. More than just knowing how to do the knife cut itself and how to pronounce, I would often see it in stir-fried noodle dishes, fresh lumpia and lumpiang gulay, and in our homemade atchara.
To julienne means to cut vegetables into matchstick-shaped pieces. And while there is an entire lexicon of matchstick-shaped knife cuts that all vary in length, width, and thickness, we don’t need to tackle that right now. Maybe you’re someone like me who doesn’t have a ruler anywhere near their chopping board. All you need to know is that if you can slice a vegetable, you are more than capable of julienne-ing.
First rule is you should peel off all of the skin first. If you care about making perfectly regular pieces at the end, you can opt to cut off both curved ends to make it flat.
One thing you should have already decided is how long or how short you want to make your matchsticks. If you want to keep them long, start cutting the vegetable lengthwise. You’ll end up with long slab-shaped pieces. If you want them much shorter, cut the vegetable crosswise first and then start cutting them into slabs. If you’re cutting vegetables for dishes like sushi or kimbap, you can keep them long since you will be cutting them later on after you roll them up. But if you want to add it to your pancit, you can cut them to be much shorter for easier bites.
Once you’ve cut your vegetable in slabs, you can stack up to 3 pieces on top of each other and start cutting them lengthways into strips. You can stack more or less pieces depending on how thick you cut the slabs. If this is your first time attempting this knife cut, always err on the side of caution!
The pros of the julienne cut are that it ensures the vegetables cook evenly while reducing the time you actually need to cook compared to if they were cut into bigger, uneven pieces. Not just for presentation, but it also improves their overall texture when cooked.
3. Brunoise
If you’ve ever diced an ingredient for a recipe before, you’re already one step closer to doing the brunoise cut!
In essence, a brunoise is a specific type of dicing, but is much more precise and much smaller than a standard dice. If you go any smaller than that, then that would already be considered minced. Cutting vegetables this small is good as garnish and for adding into soups, stocks, and stews. Them being tiny not only makes them cook faster but also releases their flavor more efficiently.
In execution, think of it as doing a julienne cut but with extra steps in the end. Peel the skin off. Cut into slabs, except how long or short they are will only matter in terms of how much of the vegetable you need. Cut into matchsticks. From there, simply dice them. There is such a thing as too small, so make sure that at the end of the day they still look like cubes.
Extremely small cubes, but cubes nonetheless.
More than Garnish
As someone whose favorite part of cooking has always been doing mise en place, learning different knife cuts and practicing them whenever I get the chance is one way I try to make myself useful in our kitchen at home.
Something worth stressing: Studying different knife cuts goes beyond just adding pretty garnish at the end. Each cut serves an actual purpose suited for different dishes and preparations. Exceeding aesthetics, it’s about better consistency, improving texture, and adding nuance to the overall flavor of whatever you are cooking.
So the next time you encounter a recipe that mentions any one of these knife cuts, I hope you not only try them out for yourself, but also have a better understanding and appreciation of why exactly an ingredient needs to be cut a certain way.
Frequently Asked Questions
To chiffonade is to cut a leafy herb or vegetable into long, tiny strips or “ribbons.”
To julienne is to cut a vegetable into planks or matchstick-shaped pieces.
To brunoise is to cut an ingredient into the smallest cubes possible.
There are many variations of knife cuts depending on what is the best way for an ingredient to be incorporated into the making of a dish or the dish itself. Some knife cuts make it so the ingredient cooks much faster. Some are best for soups or stews. Some are more aesthetically pleasing for garnish.
A recipe will usually specify which cut to use in the instructions. A chiffonade ensures herbs and leafy greens are evenly distributed throughout a dish. A julienne helps vegetables cook faster and more evenly while adding a satisfying crunch. Lastly, a brunoise is ideal when adding fine ingredients to a soup, stew, or stock.
