12: Technique: Preparing Stick and Dice Cuts Animation Video
Transcript:
Technique: Preparing Stick and Dice Cuts
Many recipes call for ingredients of various size stick cuts or dices. To prepare either a stick or a dice cut, you begin by trimming the food so it is flat on one side. This keeps the food steady while you are cutting.
Roll the food over so it rests on the flat side and continue to trim the other five sides of the food to create a rectangular box. The knife blade should be at a right, or 90-degree, angle to the cutting board as you cut.
Next, cut the rectangle into uniform lengthwise slices. The width of the slices is determined by the size of the stick cut you want.
The slices are stacked to a manageable height. Do not stack the slices so high that they slide or shift as you slice them lengthwise into the desired width.
To create a dice cut, simply cut across the ends of the stick cuts to make cubes. To form even cubes, be sure your crosscuts are the same dimension as the sticks.