The definition of dice cutting or to dice cut is a culinary knife cut in which the food item is cut into small blocks or cubes.
Dicing may be done for aesthetic reasons or more importantly, to create uniformly sized pieces for distribution of flavour and texture throughout the dish, as well as to ensure even cooking and quicker cooking times.
Dicing usually applies to vegetables prepared in this way but it can also apply to the preparation of meat or fish and fruit.
Diced vs Chopped
Sometimes the words diced and chopped are used in the place of each other, but the word dice is used for smaller pieces and the word chop is used for larger pieces.
Chopped usually means to cut your vegetables into large chunks.
Generally, this means 2.5 centimetre (1 inch) pieces, but a recipe may tell you exactly how big to make those chunks.
Chopping usually has more leeway on the exact size than dicing.
Diced is basically small regular cubes.
This could mean around 3 mm to 1.5 cm (0.1 to ½ inch) chunks of food.
More often than not you’ll get specific instructions in the recipe.
The term “Dice” as a cooking definition refers to cutting vegetables and other foods into cubes of a specific size, while chop is less precise such as in making a fruit salad.
Dice cut sizes
Dicing is a precision cut that is consistent in size.
How do you know how big or small something is supposed to be?
In our recipes on Good food to eat we think it matters, we include a measurement, for example 1cm cubes.
In classical French cooking there are of four sizes:
Cut
Metric Cut Size
US Cut Size
Brunoise cut size
3 mm cubes
0.11811 inch cubes
Small dice cut size
6 mm cubes
0.23622 inch cubes
Medium dice cut size
1 cm cubes
0.393701 inch cubes
Large dice cut size
1.5 cm cubes
0.590551 inch cubes
What Does Dice Mean When Cooking
How big is a dice when cooking? What is the difference between dice and chop?
Lots of recipes call for a dice.
Watch Trish demonstrate and learn how to dice onions, celery and carrots.”
