1,537 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Small, regular pieces

When we cook, bake or pastry, we often have to cut food into small pieces, often cubes, to incorporate them into a recipe or preparation.

How do you get regular pieces fairly quickly?

11 K 4.5/5 (17 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Technique Cutting Pieces Knife Size

Last modified on: November 28^th 2020

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Small, regular pieces

brunoise de légumes

This need for small, regular pieces often arises when you have to cut up a whole heap of food, usually raw, and dice it most of the time. Note in passing that very small pieces = brunoise, larger pieces = mirepoix, in the vocabulary of cooks.

So it happens a lot, and if you're not too comfortable, you'll intuitively cut a first large piece of the food in question, then cut it into smaller pieces, start again, and so on.

This works, of course, but it takes a long time, and above all you'll be very irregular.

Is there a trick to this?

Yes, yes, well actually it's more a method, a way of doing things, a "taille" as the cooks say.

Take a look at how, for example, to obtain small cubes of cheese (of course, this applies to just about anything else).

en lamelles 1) Start by slicing or shredding everything you've planned, aiming for the thickness of the slices, the size of the dice you're aiming for.

en bâtonnets 2) Stack the slices, then cut them into sticks, using the same size criteria as above.

en dés 3) Finally, cut the sticks (in groups for faster processing) into small cubes.

en brunoise That's it, by proceeding in this way, you'll get the hang of it, and you'll be up and running in no time, especially once you've had a bit of practice.

You can do this for just about any food.

Tosum up: when you've got dicing to do, do strips, then sticks, then dice. That's the secret of consistency and speed.

Lasts posts

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20256855

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20259695

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 2025870

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20252,4725

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20257,3493

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

How to sprinkle well?

When in a recipe you need to sprinkle something, that is to say to spread a fine layer of powder (flour, sugar, etc.) on something, powdered sugar on a pie for example, you will probably use a fine strainer or a sieve, this is the best way to proceed. But is that all?
May 23^th 202310 K4.7

Well-cooked meat

Have you ever noticed that if you like your meat well done, it invites strange looks? For instance, in a restaurant, when asked “How would you like that cooked?” If you reply, “Well done,” it is almost as if you are swearing….
May 21^th 201134 K 14.4

Too much sweet and savoury

There is a food trend which is creeping in everywhere in France right now: mixing sweet with savoury. In some restaurants, it is becoming difficult to order a classic dish, like “roast veal” for instance, without being served fruits in the garnish or honey/conserves/syrup in the sauce or cooked...
November 3^rd 201127 K4.5

The window-pane test in bread-making

The home bread-makers often ask themselves “Have I kneaded my dough long enough?” . A good question, as dough that is insufficiently kneaded will not rise properly or will fall flat when the top is slashed, which is very frustrating. To know when the dough is ready, one can rely on the length...
June 16^th 202196 K 23.9

What is the difference between bakery and patisserie?

This is a question that you may well have asked yourself and which I will attempt to answer. In France the two trades of "boulangerie" (bakery) and "pâtisserie" (patisserie and confectionery) have always been quite distinct, but where exactly do the boundaries lie? .
February 7^th 2017134 K 14.1