How to Dice Potatoes: Tips for Cooking With Diced Potatoes

Dicing is the process of turning food into small cubes. When you dice a potato, you create uniform shapes that are easier to manage and cook more consistently than whole potatoes.

Diced potato cubes (whether they’re sweet potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, or red potatoes) make excellent additions to hash recipes, stir-fries, stews, potato salads, and breakfast scrambles. The shape provides a worthy alternative to potato wedges, French fries, shoestring potatoes, and whole baked potatoes.

Dicing potatoes involves a few simple steps.

1. 1. Assemble your tools. To properly dice potatoes, you will need a cutting board and a sharp knife—ideally a long chef's knife. You do not need to peel potatoes before dicing them, but you will need a potato peeler for that step if you choose to peel your potatoes. As for the potatoes themselves, russet potatoes are generally the easiest to dice into uniform shapes.
2. 2. Wash the potatoes. You can wash the potatoes in cold water using a colander or simply by holding them beneath running water. Dry them off with a paper towel or dish towel.
3. 3. Peel the potatoes (optional). If you want to peel off the potato's outer skin, this is the time to do it. An ordinary vegetable peeler will work with potatoes.
4. 4. Slice each potato in half lengthwise. Once you've sliced the potato in half, you have a flat side to place against the cutting board to keep the potato from rolling around.
5. 5. Slice lengthwise two more times. Once you have two potato halves, slice them lengthwise again, and then again after that. You should now have eight long strips of cut potatoes for each potato you started with.
6. 6. Stack your strips atop one another. Since your strips have flat sides, you can stack them on top of one another for consistent slicing.
7. 7. Slice each stack into even pieces. Cut each stack into equally spaced pieces to produce diced potatoes of roughly equal size.

Diced potatoes fit into many great recipes.

1. 1. Chowder: Diced potatoes are perfect for hearty stews, corn chowder, and clam chowder.
2. 2. Soup: Bite-sized diced potatoes cook quickly in boiling water or broth. Pair diced potatoes with other similarly sized vegetables like green beans and zucchini for a simple vegetable soup.
3. 3. Breakfast scramble: Sautée diced potatoes in olive oil under medium heat alongside similarly sized red peppers and onions. Add eggs or crumbled soft tofu for a delicious breakfast scramble.
4. 4. Roasted potatoes: You can roast diced potatoes by placing them in a single layer on a baking sheet. Garnish them with rosemary, olive oil, salt, and pepper for a classic flavor.
5. 5. Fried potatoes: Crispy fried potatoes make a tempting appetizer or side dish. Drop cubed potatoes the size of medium dice into a pan of sizzling oil, and fry them until they are crispy.

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