When I first started cooking, my knife skills were horrible. Well, they really haven’t improved all of that much, but at least my knowledge has gotten a little better. for instance, when a recipe called for something chopped, minced, or diagonal sliced, well, I wasn’t really sure what the end product would look like, and if it really mattered if my pieces were larger or smaller.
In some instances, the size of your pieces that you need may have a lot to do with your preferences for texture. You may prefer something cubed because of the bite-size nature and the full flavor of the item. In many cases, however, the size of your cutting will affect the recipe. The smaller the pieces, generally, the more that particular flavor is integrated into a dish. The larger the pieces, the fuller that flavor stands alone.
I also mentioned diagonal sliced. This is often a nice cut for stir fry dishes. It is a fancy cut that does well when you cook quickly.
So what generally works best for what?
Minced, which is the smallest cut, works well for adding ingredients to sauces, dressings and condiments.
Chopped, cuts of slightly smaller pieces is usually the old standby. Use this cut to add ingredients to soups, salads, slow cooked recipes and more. It imparts subtle flavor.
Diced is the next size up in the cut. Here is where things get tricky. You can have a small, medium or large dice. A large dice resembles a cube, about the size of well, playing dice. The important thing with dicing, well with any cut but especially the dice, is to get the pieces uniform for even cooking.
Cubed, cuts that well, resemble small cubes, gives you a good bite of flavor in your recipes. The cubed cut can work well for salads, too. You can cube cheese for appetizers or to get it to melt well in recipes. I sometimes cube butter before adding it to casseroles.
There are other cuts in cooking, of course, and each chef may have a preference for a particular way of making the cut.