A brunoise is a French culinary term for a 1/8 inch cube-sized die, typically used for vegetables. The process involves making sticks through julienne, allumette, or batonnet cuts, then stacking and cutting into cubes. Different sizes of cubes have different names, and uniformity is important for even cooking.
A brunoise is a particular type of cut used in the culinary world and is notably a French culinary term that has extended beyond French cuisine and into worldwide usage. In general, it can often be used to refer to a food, often a vegetable such as a potato, that has been diced. Specifically, a brunoise is a cube-sized die of 1/8 inch (3.175 mm), with other sizes of cubed products going by other names. These names include a nut, fine nut, and fine brunoise.
The first step toward dicing a brunoise is typically making sticks for long things through a process usually called julienne, allumette, or batonnet, depending on the size of the sticks. This is often done with fairly firm products such as potatoes and starts with squaring the sides and ends of the item until it has six flat sides like a rectangular box. Squaring is performed to give stability to the piece to be cut and to facilitate the creation of the final product.
Depending on the size of cubes desired – and for a traditional brunoise die they should be 1/8 inch (3.175 mm) – the object is then cut into long slabs of the correct width. These slabs are then stacked on top of each other, only about three or four high to avoid slipping when cutting, and then cut into long sticks 1/8 inch wide (3.175 mm). This process of making these sticks is referred to as an allumette cut, while batonnet refers to sticks 1/4 inch (6.35 mm) wide and high, and julienne typically refers to sticks sized 1/16 inch (1, 5875 mm).
The sticks are left together in piles and the knife is then carried along them going perpendicular to the cuts that have already been made. This is the brunoise cut which creates the cubes 1/8 inch (3.175 mm) on each side. Quick and precise cuts can be made along the overlapping sticks to create small cubes of the appropriate size for any other cuts as well.
General terms used for these types of diced foods typically include large cube making 3/4 inch (1.905 cm) cubes, medium cube making 1/2 inch (1.27 cm) cubes, and small 1/4 inch (6.35 mm) cubes cut from sticks prepared by batonnet cutting. 1/16 inch (1.5875 mm) cubes made with julienne-cut elements are usually referred to as brunoise fine. These cubed foods can be used for a number of different applications, and their uniform size is important in the kitchen to ensure every piece cooks at the same pace.
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