Shelf · Knife & prep · No heat
Dicing
Cutting into cubes of one deliberate size — usually somewhere between a pea and a sugar cube, and all the same.
Why it works
A cube is the shape that cooks most evenly, because heat reaches it from every side at once. The size you choose IS the cooking time: a fine dice of onion disappears into a sauce in ten minutes, and the same onion in fat cubes is still crunchy at thirty.
The tell
Roll a few between your fingers — they should feel interchangeable. On the board they sit as a flat, even layer rather than a lumpy heap.
- Chunk
- Baton
- Matchstick
How it fails
Cutting cubes straight from a round vegetable gives wedges, not cubes, and wedges cook from one end. Slice it into flat planks first, then into sticks, then across the sticks — three passes, and every piece comes out square.
In the app, the card opens on the recipe step that names it, with the tell drawn.
Learning is free on every plan.