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Culinary Arts & Cooking vocabulary · Knife Skills & Cuts

Mince

Meaning in culinary arts & cooking, with examples

/mɪns/verbCommon term

In culinary arts & cooking, mince means: To cut or grind food into very small pieces, finer than chopping. In British English, mince as a noun also means minced meat.

In Turkish: ince ince kıymak, kıyma yapmak, kıyma

How it is used

Used for garlic, shallots, ginger and herbs, and for meat put through a mincer. Recipes say minced garlic or finely minced shallots. Americans say ground beef where the British say beef mince or minced beef.

Example sentences

  1. Mince two cloves of garlic for the dressing.

  2. The lamb mince for the köfte arrived this morning.

Common collocations

  • minced garlic
  • finely minced
  • beef mince
  • mince the shallots
  • minced meat
  • chopTo cut food into pieces with a knife, usually quickly and without needing every piece to be exactly the same size.
  • diceTo cut food into small, even cubes. As a noun, dice also means the cubes themselves, as in a fine dice of carrot.
  • brunoiseA very fine dice of vegetables, about 3 mm cubes or smaller, made by cutting a julienne across into tiny even squares.
  • chef's knifeA large all-purpose kitchen knife with a broad, slightly curved blade, usually 20 to 25 cm long, used for most chopping, slicing and dicing.

More terms: Knife Skills & Cuts

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