Brunoise: how to cut perfect small cubes
Perhaps you have seen the word in a recipe before.
Brunoise.
It sounds quite French and complicated, but actually it is something very simple: cutting vegetables or fruit into small, even cubes.
Yet brunoise is more than just cutting a few small pieces. The size and evenness have a reason. Small cubes cook quickly, distribute nicely through a dish and make sure you get different flavours and textures together in a single bite.
And the nice thing is: you don’t need a complicated food processor for it.
A good knife, a sturdy chopping board and a little patience are enough.
What does brunoise mean?
Brunoise is a classic French cutting technique in which you cut an ingredient into small cubes.
The classic size is about 0.5 × 0.5 × 0.5 centimetres. That means: a cube half a centimetre wide, half a centimetre high and half a centimetre long.
That may sound overly precise.
At home, however, you don’t need to check every cube with a ruler. The most important thing is that the pieces are about the same size.
Because that is what brunoise is mainly about.
Brunoise is not about cutting tiny, but about cutting small and even.
Why would you cut vegetables so small?
That is a good question.
You could of course also just cut a carrot into coarse pieces. Why go to all that trouble?
Because the cut affects what happens during cooking.
Small cubes:
- cook quickly;
- cook more evenly when they are the same size;
- mix easily through a dish;
- give a little flavour in every bite;
- look well presented.
Brunoise is therefore often used in soups, sauces, salads, dressings and as a garnish.
A few small cubes of carrot, celery and pepper, for example, can give a soup or sauce just a little more colour, texture and flavour.
So it is not just a way of making something look nice.
The cutting technique also affects the cooking itself.
Brunoise starts with a straight vegetable
Here is a small secret that beginners often skip.
A carrot is round.
If you try to cut small cubes from it straight away, you automatically get all kinds of uneven pieces.
That is why you first make the ingredient as straight as possible.
With a carrot, for example, you can trim the sides a little so that a kind of rectangular block is formed.
You don’t need to throw the trimmings away, of course. Use them, for example, in a soup, stock or sauce.
That way it is much easier to end up with neat cubes.
How to cut brunoise
The handiest way is to see the technique in three steps:
slices → strips → cubes
That is actually the whole secret.
Step 1 – Cut the ingredient into slices
First make a stable base.
Then cut the ingredient into slices about half a centimetre thick.
Try to make the slices as even as possible.
You don’t need to cut perfectly straight away. Working calmly is more important than speed.
Step 2 – Make strips
Lay a number of slices neatly on top of each other.
Then cut them into long strips about half a centimetre wide.
You have now actually made julienne: thin, even strips.
That is no coincidence.
Brunoise is in fact julienne with one extra cut.
Step 3 – Turn and cut
Turn the strips a quarter turn.
Then cut small pieces across them, again about half a centimetre.
And there are your cubes.
Brunoise.
The classic way of working is therefore:
slices → strips → cubes.
A sharp knife is more important than speed
With such small pieces, a sharp knife is not a luxury.
With a blunt knife you have to push harder through the food. That gives you less control and ingredients are more likely to slip away.
With a sharp knife you can cut calmly and in a controlled way.
And that is exactly what you need with brunoise.
Keep your fingers safe
When cutting, use the so-called claw grip.
Keep the fingers of your guiding hand curved, with the fingertips pointing inwards. The knife moves along your knuckles while you keep pushing the ingredient forward a little at a time.
That way your fingertips stay away from the cutting edge.
Above all, work calmly.
With brunoise, speed is not the aim at all.
A professional cook can do it at lightning speed. As a beginner, that is of no use to you.
First learn to cut neatly. The speed comes by itself later.
Which vegetables are suitable?
Start with firm ingredients.
That works best because they keep their shape well during cutting.
Think of:
- carrot;
- celery;
- celeriac;
- pepper;
- onion;
- parsnip;
- courgette;
- cucumber;
- potato;
- firm apple.
Other vegetables and hard fruit can be suitable too.
Soft ingredients such as a ripe tomato are trickier. They contain a lot of moisture and can easily be squashed under the knife.
Still want to cut tomato into small cubes? Then use a sharp knife and choose a firm tomato.
What do you use brunoise for?
You see brunoise mainly in places where small pieces can complement a dish without dominating it.
In soup
Small cubes of carrot, leek, celeriac or pepper give a soup texture and colour.
Because the pieces are small, they also cook quickly.
In sauces
A fine brunoise of, for example, carrot, onion and celery can form the base of a sauce.
Because of the small pieces, they can cook gently and release their flavour.
As a garnish
Here the appearance comes more to the fore.
A few colourful cubes of pepper, cucumber or carrot can immediately make a simple dish look more polished.
In salads
Brunoise provides small flavour accents throughout the salad.
Instead of one large piece of pepper, for example, you get a small piece in almost every bite.
Brunoise is also a matter of texture
Imagine a salad with large pieces of cucumber.
With one bite you mainly taste cucumber. With the next, perhaps only tomato.
If you cut the same ingredients much finer, they mix much more evenly.
That changes the way you eat a dish.
You don’t just taste the individual ingredients, but get a combination of flavours and textures in one bite.
That is one of the reasons why professional kitchens pay so much attention to cutting techniques.
What often goes wrong?
The cubes are all different
No problem if you are still practising.
Look at the first step in particular. If your slices aren’t the same thickness, the strips can’t be equal afterwards either.
So equal cubes start with equal slices.
You get little triangles instead of cubes
Then your starting shape was probably too round.
First cut the ingredient a little straighter and make a flat underside.
Your cubes keep getting bigger
You are probably moving the knife a little further along with each cut.
Try to make smaller, even movements deliberately.
You cut too fast
That is a classic beginner’s mistake.
With brunoise, speed gains you nothing if the cubes become uneven as a result.
Working calmly is learning faster.
What do you do with the leftovers?
When you square off a carrot or other vegetable to be able to cut nice cubes, you are often left with small trimmings.
Don’t automatically throw them away.
Use them, for example, for:
- stock;
- soup;
- sauce;
- a stew;
- vegetable purée.
In a professional kitchen, a great deal of attention is paid to using such trimmings.
The nicest cubes for the plate and the leftovers for, say, a stock: that way you make optimal use of one ingredient.
Brunoise, julienne and macédoine: what is the difference?
If you cook more often, you come across various French cutting terms.
Julienne
Thin, long strips.
Brunoise
Small cubes.
Macédoine
Larger cubes than brunoise.
You can remember it easily:
Julienne = strips
Brunoise = small cubes
Macédoine = larger cubes
Brunoise also often arises directly from julienne: first you make the strips and then you cut them across.
A small exercise for beginners
Want to learn this technique? Then don’t start straight away with a soft tomato.
Take a carrot.
A carrot is firm, easy to see and easy to control.
First cut it into a piece that sits comfortably on your chopping board. Make one side flat so that it stays stable.
Then cut:
slices → strips → cubes.
Afterwards, lay a few cubes next to each other.
Are they about the same size?
Then you have already got hold of the most important part of the technique.
You don’t need to make dozens of perfect cubes straight away.
Precision comes through repetition.
Remember these five things
1. First make a stable base.
A flat side prevents your ingredient from rolling away.
2. Work from large to small.
First slices, then strips, then cubes.
3. Keep the sizes equal.
The first cut ultimately determines the size of your cubes.
4. Use a sharp knife.
It gives more control and makes cutting easier.
5. Work calmly.
A neat brunoise is more important than a fast brunoise.
And then suddenly you see the difference
The first time you cut brunoise, the cubes may not all be the same size.
That doesn’t matter at all.
Next time, look back at your cutting. Are the slices more even? Are the strips straighter? Are the cubes getting smaller and more regular?
That is where the progress is.
Because cooking isn’t just about following recipes. It is also in small techniques like this.
Cutting a carrot differently may seem like a detail.
But once you understand why you cut it that way, you will know exactly what to do next time a recipe calls for brunoise.
And suddenly that complicated-sounding French word isn’t so complicated at all.