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Culinary Arts & Cooking vocabulary · Knife Skills & Cuts

Dice

Meaning in culinary arts & cooking, with examples

/daɪs/verbCore term

In culinary arts & cooking, dice means: To cut food into small, even cubes. As a noun, dice also means the cubes themselves, as in a fine dice of carrot.

In Turkish: küp küp doğramak, küp doğramak

How it is used

Used for onions, potatoes, carrots and other vegetables when the pieces should cook evenly and look neat. Chefs specify the size: small, medium or large dice, or a size in millimetres. Brunoise is a very small dice.

Example sentences

  1. Dice the onions for the sofrito, about five millimetres.

  2. These potatoes are diced too big; they won't cook in time.

Common collocations

  • finely dice
  • small dice
  • medium dice
  • diced onion
  • dice evenly
  • chopTo cut food into pieces with a knife, usually quickly and without needing every piece to be exactly the same size.
  • brunoiseA very fine dice of vegetables, about 3 mm cubes or smaller, made by cutting a julienne across into tiny even squares.
  • julienneA classic knife cut of thin, even strips like matchsticks, about 2–3 mm thick and 5 cm long. Also used as a verb: to julienne carrots.
  • sliceTo cut something into thin, flat pieces. As a noun, a slice is one of these pieces, such as a slice of bread or lemon.

More terms: Knife Skills & Cuts

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