Everything you need to know about cutting vegetables
Having a good knife makes all the difference. But it's not everything.
To get the most out of your blade, you first need to learn how to properly handle your knife to achieve beautiful and deliciously varied cuts.
But before you get to cutting, we strongly recommend starting with the basics by reading our article tolearn how to hold your knife properly.
Theory before practice
Before getting into the heart of the matter, let's first dwell on the theory. What will all this do for you?
Mastering cutting techniques is important because:
- It allows for more uniformity in the size of your food. And more uniformity in the resulting pieces also allows for better uniformity in the cooking of your vegetables, for example.
- This allows for more consistency in your fruit and vegetable cutting. And it's definitely prettier. Enjoying food begins with the eyes.
- This allows for greater safety and minimizes carelessness when cutting, which could lead to injury.
And of course, in addition to having good cutting techniques, it's important to always stay focused. This may seem obvious, but we'll repeat it anyway.
To summarize the theory, mastering cutting techniques can be a valuable aid in improving efficiency and safety in the kitchen, and in fact, enjoying cooking more.
The main vegetable cutting techniques:
Now that you're informed, let's get down to business.
There are different vegetable cutting techniques you can perform using your kitchen knife. Here are our 5 favorites.
Slicing
Let's start with slicing, also known as cutting into rounds. Whether you're planning to make a beautiful tomato salad or radish pickles, the slicing technique is essential. While no specific dimensions are set for this type of cut, we generally refer to it as thin slices, as the term "minced" indicates!
The Brunoise
Do you want to make a nice, comforting vegetable soup? With chunks, of course. Then opt for brunoise dicing. This involves cutting your vegetables (or fruit, which also works) into tiny 2mm-thick squares after first rinsing and peeling them.
The Julienne
Perhaps the most well-known cut, julienne is nonetheless a technique that requires patience and attention to detail. To properly julienne, you will need:
- Start by washing and peeling your vegetables
- Then cut them into small, rather thin sticks. We're talking about a thickness varying around 2mm and a length no more than 5mm.
Ideal for filling your spring rolls!
The Mirepoix
Now let's move on to one of the lesser-known techniques among young chefs. It's a recipe quite similar to brunoise, which requires first cutting into 5 cm long and 1.5 cm thick pieces, which are then transformed into 1 mm cubes. A smaller brunoise, in short!
The Macedonia
Macedoine is also cut into small cubes. But into small cubes of a completely different thickness, since here we are talking about cubes ranging from 3 to 4 mm, and whose size corresponds to that of peas... Not surprising when you know that vegetable macedoine includes peas and vegetable cubes.
Ratatouille, steamed vegetables, fruit salad, vegetable sticks... Now that you know how to cut vegetables, all you have to do is get yourself a goodchef's knife if you haven't already. Be careful, you'll see it's addictive, and you might end up naming your daughter Julienne.
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