Batonnet

Batonnet (French bâtonnet — “little stick”) is a classic French cut in which a vegetable is turned into even rectangular sticks roughly 6 mm thick and wide and 5–6 cm long. It is one of the base dimensions in the system of precise cuts and underlies many other shapes.

To obtain perfect sticks, the vegetable (most often potato, carrot, courgette, or beetroot) is first trimmed into a neat rectangular block, then divided into planks and sticks of identical cross-section. The evenness of the cut is not merely aesthetic: a uniform size guarantees even cooking, with every piece reaching doneness at the same moment. The batonnet also serves as an intermediate stage: if such a stick is cut crosswise into cubes, a small dice is obtained. The batonnet is distinguished from the thicker cut for chips — pommes pont-neuf (about 0.8–2 cm in cross-section). Command of this cut is a mark of a cook's knife skill.