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Are you still finding your way around your kitchen? Cutting, chopping, mixing and cooking your own meals can be daunting if you're yet to learn all the basics. If you're cooking your meals from scratch you probably already know that choosing the correct method of cutting your vegetables is important when you're making curries or stir-fries.
The size and thickness of your veggies impact many things, including taste, texture and even cooking time. Not to mention not every veggie can be cut similarly since they vary quite a bit in texture and taste. Here are the four basic knife cuts that are commonly used in Indian cooking:
Dice
Cut One of the most commonly used cuts for Indian curries and dals, dicing involves cutting ingredients into uniformly sized cubes, similar to the French brunoise cut. This is the best way of cutting vegetables for stews, braises and slow-cooked recipes since they can withstand prolonged cooking without losing their shape.
The medium dice of 1/4 by 1/4 is one of the most widely used cuts for vegetables like tomatoes, carrots, onions, okra etc. A sharp chef knife or santoku knife is ideal for medium to large dices, but any round-blade kitchen knife should ideally work
Mince
Mincing refers to rough chopping everything and chopping it again for fine pieces; although there are several different ways of mincing used in Indian recipes. Garlic and ginger are the most commonly minced vegetables which are added as aromatics in most recipes; however, bell peppers, cabbages, and spring onions are also often minced. Mincing releases the oils from the food and breaks down the fibres on the veggies so there are no unchewable solids
Chop
Chopping can have many different techniques; while Indian recipes usually feature finely chopped ingredients, a few recipes like veggie stews, Malabar curries, Chettinad Kurmas or Goan kaju curry call for roughly chopped veggies. Even if they're roughly chopped, vegetables will cook at more or less the same time if they're similarly cut, or have some symmetry in shapes.
Rondelle
Cutting vegetables into round or coin shapes is a common tactic in Indian cooking, especially for cylindrical vegetables. Rondelle cuts are often found in salads or for dressing a platter but this cut is ideal for roasting and grilling since it exposes a wide area on the vegetable body so it browns easily. Very few curries make use of the Rondelle cut since they usually tend to feature smaller cuts of vegetables; some regional items like Bengali brinjal and bitter gourd fritters are often cut in round shapes
Baton Cut
Though julienne or baton are used to refer to the same cut, the difference between them has to do with thickness. Most Indian recipes use the baton cut which is a stick-cut, where veggies are cut lengthwise to form long rectangles. Certain regional recipes like Podiyal, Shukto etc make use of this cut. The baton cut usually measures ¼ inch by ¼ inch by 2 inches, whereas a julienne usually sticks to a ⅛ inch by ⅛ inch by 2 inches. Though julienned veggies cook more uniformly, the bato cut allows the vegetables to retain more nutrients
