The Cuts

These are the various knife cuts. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with them, as they are standardized and come up in nearly every recipe you'll ever use.

Note: To build your knife skills, buy some potatoes, or any other cheap produce you'll be able to use after you chop them up, and practice, practice, practice. You can then use the cut potatoes, or whatever veggie you chose, in a recipe. But, I can't stress enough how good knife skills make the cook and the only way to get them is by practice.

The large dice is a culinary knife cut measuring ¾ inch × ¾ inch × ¾ inch.

The batonnet measures ½ inch × ½ inch × 2½-3 inches. It is also the starting point for another cut, the medium dice.

The medium dice measures ½ inch × ½ inch × ½ inch.

Measuring ¼ inch × ¼ inch × 2½-3 inches, the allumette is sometimes referred to as the "matchstick cut." It's also the starting point for the small dice.

The small dice measures ¼ inch × ¼ inch × ¼ inch and is produced by slicing the allumette into ¼ inch sections.

The julienne cut measures 1/8 inch × 1/8 inch × 2½ inches. It's also the starting point for the brunoise knife cut.

The brunoise knife cut (pronounced BROON-wahz) measures 1/8 inch × 1/8 inch × 1/8 inch.

The fine julienne knife cut measures 1/16 inch × 1/16 inch × 2 inches. It's also the starting point for the fine brunoise cut.

The fine brunoise knife cut (pronounced BROON-wahz) measures 1/16 inch × 1/16 inch × 1/16 inch. Tiny!