What is the difference between diced chopped and minced

Sometimes a recipe will call for a small or medium chop, when this happens focus more on the size of the pieces rather than their shape. Diced — Dicing is more uniform than chopping. The size is also somewhat smaller. Imagine the diameter of a pea but squared. Dicing is usually called for in a recipe where the ingredients are uncooked like in salsas and picos. Minced — Mincing is simply a very fine chop.

You do not need to focus on uniformity here. White onions are a bit milder, but still lend good flavor to recipes. All onions loose their potency quickly when cooked; the brown and white onions stand up best in lending flavor to cooked recipes.

There is also a little trick for chopping onions: refrigerate them first, get them good and cold, and avoid the tears. This works. Really, it does…. Are you a busy person who just never got around to learning the basics of cooking? We built startcooking. You'll learn how to make quick and tasty meals, plus learn the basic cooking skills you'll need. Get ready to start cooking! Dyelry Labbate said: Belive or not Kathy, I am trying to get kristen to add your website to her favorites so she can start some place.

Kathy Maister said: Hi Dyelry, great to hear from you! A recipe writer picks a size because it affects cooking time, texture, and taste. If you dice vegetable chunks too large, you will mess up your cooking time. Chopping usually has further flexibility on the precise size than other methods.

You will run into mincing every now and again with various vegetables, but most commonly, garlic. Repeat until the ingredients are roughly chopped into the same size. The dice is a knife cut that creates small, uniform pieces.

Although it requires a bit more precision and practice, diced ingredients lend themselves well to toppings, sidings, or to part of a larger dish.

For instance, diced tomatoes are a staple in the classic bruschetta, diced fruit is used in chutney, and diced potatoes are perfect in a hearty beef stew.

Taking the extra time and effort to dice ingredients is worth it — it ensures that the dish cooks evenly and the final plating looks much more professional. To begin dicing, have a stable cutting board and a sharp knife. A chef's knife or santoku are good for dense ingredients think root crops , while a serrated knife is better for soft or thin-skinned produce like tomatoes.

Most ingredients start with an irregular, organic shape. To get them into equal pieces, it helps to first cut the ingredient into a manageable shape. Take an onion, for example. Start dicing an onion by positioning it on a stable cutting board and using a sharp knife to slice off the stem end. Next, cut the entire bulb completely in half. Take one half, peel the skin, and lay it with the flat cut side down.

Slice just until you reach the root end of the onion without cutting the entire length. Leaving the root end for last will help you avoid a messy pile of chopped onion and make the dicing process faster. Then with the onion half still intact, slice vertically from the top to the bottom, at the same intervals. Rotate the half an onion 90 degrees, and again slice across the vertical cuts you just made until you reach the root end.

This should leave you with a nice pile of diced onions and a root you can easily discard. Repeat for the other onion half. Cut off all round or uneven sides to form a rectangular or straight-edged shape. Then proceed to dice the ingredients to the desired size.