Lauren, my dear, it is not the brunoise
Nov 15, 2008 cooking, general food
Although I fell asleep with boredom in my first attempt to watch Top Chef New York, I was awake just long enough to take personal offense to Lauren’s comment that the brunoise is “the hardest knife cut.” Having spent countless hours practicing for the first portion of the Jr. Culinary Olympic competition (a knife skills practical exam) I know a thing or two about knife skills and brunoise being hardest is simply not the case.
Technically, a brunoise is a 1/8” x 1/8” x 1/8” dice. Period. Because a julienne is 1/8” wide people will sometimes say a brunoise is a julienne turned 90 degrees and cut again. That could be the case, but a julienne is technically 1/8” x 1/8” x 2-2 ½”. If you were cutting a lot of brunoise you’d probably want to start with something longer.
The classic knife cuts…Large Dice – 3/4” x 3/4” x 3/4” Batonnet 1/4” x 1/4” x 2-2 1/2” Paysanne – 1/8” thick squares – 1/2” x 1/2” x 1/8” |
These are classic French knife cuts. They’re what the American Culinary Federation uses for their competitions and they’re what culinary schools teach. They have these standards so that as you roll from one kitchen to another there’s no need for a chef to explain what size they’re looking for when you’re asked to cut something up. Your chef could simply say, “Everyone prep me up a 9-pan of brunoised carrots.” Then, because everyone knows what a brunoise is, he could collect those pans from the entire staff and mix them all together. They should all be identical. It’s a beautiful thing when a few people in a kitchen can all be so precise with their knife skills that they can each brunoise a different vegetable to later combine into an identically brunoised mix of vegetables. They can then drop them into something like a consommé and leave informed diners quietly applauding their skill and attention to detail.
Of course your chef could also be
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Tags: brunoise, classic knife cuts, competition, french knife cuts, Top Chef, Tourné
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