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Dice Cooking Definition
Dicing or to dice is a culinary knife cut in which the food item is cut into small blocks or chunks.
Dicing may be done for aesthetic reasons or 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.
Chopped vs Diced
Sometimes the words chop and dice 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 squares.
Generally, this means 1 to 2 centimetre pieces, but a recipe may tell you exactly how big to make those chunks.
Chopping usually has more leeway on the exact size than other methods.
Diced is basically small chops.
This would mean around half-a-centimetre chunks of food. Oftentimes 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.
How do you know how big or small something is supposed to be?
In our recipes and we think it matters, we will also include a measurement, for example 1cm cubes.
Dicing food sizes
In classical French cooking there are of four sizes:
- Brunoise;
3 mm cubes. - Small dice;
6 mm cubes. - Medium dice;
0.99 cm cubes. - Large dice;
1.5 cm cubesWhat Does Dice Mean – When Cooking
How big is a dice when cooking? What is the difference between chopped and diced?
Lots of recipes call for a dice. Watch Trish demonstrate how to dice onions, celery and carrots, also knowns as “mirepoix.”