Knife Skills

Often when reading recipes you will see terms like diced, minced, and julienned among others. These are different cutting techniques that can be very useful. Here's a great photo showing how each basic cut looks.

Found this great photo on another blog talking about kitchen fundamentals!

Now that you know what each term looks like the next step is how do you cut food to look that way? Below I have provided a video clip for each term to help. These clips are not the only way to perform these cuts, but they are a good starting point if you are just learning these techniques.

Chop

Chopping means cutting the food into small even pieces. In this video pay attention to how the knife rocks on the cutting board.

Diced

Diced means to cut the food into small squares with the pieces being as about the same size for appearance. Diced and fine diced are more or less the same. The only difference is when you are finely dicing you make your cuts closer together. This video clip comes from the kitchen of Jamie Oliver on how to dice a tomato.

Minced

Mince means to cut into very small pieces. Smaller than a dice or a chop. The most commonly minced food is garlic so below is a video on how to do that.

Julienne 

Julienne means to cut into long and thing strips. 

Slice

To slice a food means to cut it into pieces that are consistent in thickness. 

Your knife will always cut better when it's sharp but it's important to remember to always be careful when using a knife. 

As always feel free to leave questions or comments below.