Sunday, May 13, 2012

Slicing and Dicing

 AKA: Tiny food cubes and how to make them with your knife.

When I got started in the kitchen I had no idea how much MATH I would be using on a daily basis... and not just simple adding and subtracting either; we're talking ratios, averages, geometry!

Most chefs probably wouldn't describe it that way, but to the analytically minded it makes a lot of sense to view the kitchen from a mathematical standpoint.

What does all that have to do with dicing vegetables? Well, think about it: what is "dicing?"

Dicing is the culinary cut used to take a big thing and divide it up into lots and lots of uniformly 'cube' shaped smaller things.


There are numerous reasons why a chef would want to do that, but the main ones are:

Aesthetic appeal: presenting a perfectly uniform product is a way for cooks to display their professional skill and prowess in the kitchen.

Standardization: cooking times are affected by the mass and volume of an object relative to the method of cooking applied to it. By cutting ingredients to a uniform size the savvy chef can control how long it will take to cook them. The smaller the object, the less cooking required. The 'cube' shape is also ideal for ensuring ingredients are cooked evenly. Just think of dice rattling around when you play Yahtzee; there is equal opportunity and probability that all six sides will at some point be in direct contact with the surface of the table (or in this case the surface of a hot pan!)

How to Dice
The most important aspect of a proper dice is consistency. 

There's a big difference between 'whacking up' and 'dicing.' That difference is consistency. When dicing, the space between the cuts you make will be the same size every time. If you can consistently perform those measured cuts, you can rely on the finished product being uniform. 

Vegetables come in all different shapes and sizes, but the general method of dicing will usually be the same: 
  • Remove as little excess product as possible to make a big cube;
  • Divide that cube into slices; 
  • Divide those slices into columns; 
  • Divide those columns into uniform cells

This is the basic 'grid' method of dicing and is the most widely used by professionals. Potatoes and carrots are good mediums for practicing this technique. 

Some vegetables are abnormally shaped and provide a particular challenge to culinary perfectionists (think butternut squash), but you'll get the hang of it with a little bit of practice and creativity. Just look at the object and imagine the greatest possible combination of cubes you can carve out of it. 

There are three different sizes of dice: but I'm feeling lazy so I'll tell you about those later.

2 comments:

  1. Nice description of dicing. Reading your posts has caused me to think a lot more about what I am doing and why, when in the kitchen. Makes it more fun and interesting!

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    1. Thanks! There's a certain sense of "kitchen awe" that people get when they watch chefs hack and slash through veggies on TV, but there really isn't much to it. Just knowledge and experience.

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