Have you ever chopped when you were supposed to slice and wondered why yourgratindidn’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 ofcarrotthat 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.
Batons
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 orcelery. 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.