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Jun 01, 2023

A Visual Guide to 13 Extremely Handy Knife Cuts

By Christian Reynoso Have you ever chopped when you were supposed to slice and

By Christian Reynoso

Have you ever chopped when you were supposed to slice and wondered why your gratin didn't come out just like the photo? Or noticed that your "finely chopped" garlic isn't browning evenly?

The way you cut a vegetable can change your dish profoundly. Minced mirepoix that melts into your sauce is very different from a chunky chopped base for making stock. Sometimes you’re looking for skinny julienned strands of carrot that will cook rapidly in a wok, and sometimes you’re looking for roll-cut bites that will roast and caramelize on all sides.

In this guide, I share many of the everyday knife cuts that make their way into my home cooking, plus a few that I picked up while working in restaurant kitchens. Once you practice these cuts a few times, you’ll be julienning and dicing your way around the kitchen confidently, whether you’re following a recipe or not.

A baton cut is long and narrow—it turns your vegetables into little wands that you could almost use to conduct an orchestra. A veggie platter (a.k.a. crudités) probably wouldn't be complete without batons of carrots or celery. The cut turns vegetables into perfect finger food—graspable with plenty of length for dunking into sauces and dips. The simplest baton to cut is probably celery. Just slice a stalk in half lengthwise (splitting the U-shape curve into two flatter C shapes), and then cut each skinny length into slices that are about 2 to 3 inches long.

The bias cut is something I do daily without thinking twice about it. When I cut a chicken breast against the grain into even, diagonal pieces, that's a bias cut. When I slice a baguette at an angle to create more surface area for spreading butter, that's a bias cut. You can bias-cut almost any oblong vegetable or fruit like asparagus, leeks, or trumpet mushrooms, as well as meats (like ham and leg of lamb) or fish (like wide salmon slices for sashimi). To test it out yourself, grab a cuke, lay it down so that it's pointing from left to right on the cutting board, and make thin 45-degree angle slices, about ½-inch thick. Throw these in a salad for crunch. The elongated shape will let the cucumber soak up more dressing.

Usually about 1 inch or larger, cubes are all about adding a sturdy, hearty element to a dish. If you’re doing a braise, cutting a chunk of pork shoulder into uniform cubes makes them cook evenly, but the larger size will leave you with a tender mass that flakes into pieces. Cubing also works great for evenly cooking skewered meat or vegetables on the grill. Bread, when cubed, can be the perfect, golden brown, crannied crouton, adding some architectural loft to your salad and just waiting to be soaked in Caesar dressing. Try cubing a loaf of bread by cutting 1-inch slices, then into long strips that are 1-inch wide, and then into 1-inch squares.

To be diced is to be nice and precise. Once you have this cut down, you can turn any mix of root vegetables into confetti. The diminutive cut makes it possible to cook vegetables like onion very fast, quickly aromatizing a pasta or soup base. The cut also works for raw foods where you just want an even bite of contrasting tastes and textures, like in a raw poke or acidulated ceviche. To try it, grab a big potato, and cut lengthwise into long planks that are either ¼-inch thick (for a small dice), ½-inch thick (for a medium dice), or ¾-inch thick (for a large dice). Square off the sides (which will also remove the skin), and cut each plank into strips of uniform thickness. Then line up a few strips at a time and cut by the same measurement into cubes.

It might seem a bit high-maintenance for a small handful of vegetables to get their own specific knife cut. But when you’re basically a big edible flower-like veggie, you are special, and you deserve your very own look. Mostly reserved for cauliflower, broccoli, and romanesco, which have flowering tops, this cut is designed to segment a completely nongeometric vegetable into uniform pieces. To take a spin at it, slice a head of cauliflower right through the stem into four even wedges. After that, slice out the core while leaving the flowering tops (and their individual stems) as intact as possible. Then separate individual stems, and cut any large pieces down from the top down through the stem.

Peeling the skin from apples leaves their crisp inner flesh ready for pies, and peeling the outer layer of asparagus can ensure those spears are tender all the way through. Sometimes peeling is more about the peel itself than what's inside—a strip of orange zest gives a fruity-pebble aroma and flavor (in a good way!) to any stew, and lemon peel, finely chopped and folded into pancake batter, can lift spirits in the dead of winter. For delicate peeling jobs, I love my Kuhn Rikon Swiss peeler for its razor-sharp edge and ergonomic design. Peel an orange by holding it in your hand and placing the peeler against the top, near the nob where the fruit was picked from the stem. With light downward pressure, pull the peeling down around the curve of the orange to create an even ribbon.

The roll cut is reserved specifically for cylindrical vegetables. The resulting shape is oblique, with multiple sides that make it ideal for stir-frying and even roasting. A group of carrots cut this way can look somewhat uniform, but rustic. Try it with a small zucchini or carrot by slicing at a 45-degree angle, then rolling (or turning) the vegetable over about a quarter turn then making another angled cut through again. If the vegetable is something like a parsnip, and one end is much thicker, then cutting the whole parsnip in half lengthwise first will make roll cutting it easier with two smaller more manageable pieces.

Rounds (also known as discs, wheels, etc.) are a great cut because you only need to cut along the "hemisphere" for a satisfying visual appeal. Think citrus and radish round salads or discs of tomato and cucumber in the height of summer. Rounds are specifically great for raw preparations because the cut sizes down the fruit or vegetable into a more pleasurable bite, just by following its natural shape. To make a round cut, just make thin ¼-inch-to-½-inch lateral slices by pressing the knife simultaneously downward and forward, using the full length of the knife to complete the motion.

I don't have many cutting tools besides actual knives, but the thinnest, most delicate shaves call for a real razor-like gadget like the mandoline. People are scared of them, and for good reason. Accidentally getting your fingers too close can draw blood, so superb concentration and control (and a finger guard or even cut-resistant gloves) are key. Open that bottle of rosé after doing your mandoline cuts, okay? But if you need a huge pile of precisely and identically cut vegetables, like long zucchini ribbons for a salad or potatoes for a gratin, there is nothing better.

Most mandoline sets are adjustable and have special attachments that allow you to make julienne or baton cuts as well, but I find the gadget most helpful for making thin shavings. For your first mandoline rodeo, try with something small like a radish or jalapeño. Curl your fingers at the back of the vegetable, and then glide it down the mandoline ramp and through the blade. Adjust the blade for thickness and try again, slowly, until you’ve gotten comfortable with that vegetable. One last tidbit of advice here is to remember that vegetables are slippery when wet, so more caution is needed for mandoline-ing peeled vegetables.

The first time I used a knife to mince, I was in junior high and my grandpa (who was the cook of the family) was teaching me knife skills. That feeling of putting my hand on top of the knife to hold it steady and just going to town on a pile of garlic was scary at first, but then it felt so powerful, like my entire arm was a mincing machine. You may be accustomed to using a food processor to mince things like garlic or mirepoix, but mincing by hand helps preserve the integrity of whatever you’re working on, and it's much easier to gauge the size. All too often, even the best food processor yields an unevenly chopped pulpy mess if you hold the button down even just a few seconds too long. To mince some garlic with a chef's knife, first slice the peeled cloves thinly, then stack those pieces, slice into strips, and finally chop until you have very, very small pieces, about ⅛ of an inch.

Chopping is just like mincing, but you stop sooner, leaving bigger yet still irregularly shaped pieces that are about the same size. This technique is ideal for any cooking green or leafy herbs, like parsley or cilantro. You could make a quick pasta sauce using only chopped things, like garlic, fennel seed, bacon, and chard. To try chopping a pile of fresh herbs, curl your fingers, and place them gently on top of the pile of leaves. Use the knife to slice across the pile in one direction, using your curled fingers as a guide, and then reverse the direction and make another pass through the pile to chop the pieces even smaller. Repeat a few times until you’ve cut down any particularly large leaves or bunches of leaves.

The julienne is similar to a baton cut, but creates tiny matchsticks that are more delicate—perfect for pickled carrots and daikon or raw vegetables for gingery stir-fries. Because juliennes are so small, it's imperative here to have a very sharp knife (but, you already know this). You’ll also have the best results here if you "square off" your vegetable before cutting. To do this, cut down your (likely) cylindrical vegetable on four sides so you start julienning with a rectangle. Like the baton cut, first you’ll take your vegetable and cut it into ⅛-inch-wide slabs. Then you’ll pile the slabs on top of one another and cut again at the same size. You can also use this cut to make an angelic garnish of feathery basil or mint. Just pile the leaves, roll into a small cigar, and cut thinly.

A wedge cut gives you almost identical triangles, usually of spherical or curvy fruits and vegetables. The appropriately named "wedge salad" is a good example, but cabbage wedges can easily be caramelized in butter, and wedges of onion will have more surface area than halves, allowing them to cook faster or perfume a stock quicker. To practice, just lay a sweet potato flat, cut it in half lengthwise, and then cut each piece in half lengthwise again until you have four wedges. For narrower wedges, cut these four pieces in half lengthwise one more time.