In many recipes, you are called upon to slice or dice or chop potatoes. A long time ago, I learned that taking a bit of time to be methodical up-front to save a lot of time (and get more even pieces). Early in my cooking days, I just chopped wildly, rocking the knife back and forth, moving it around, until the pieces were cut. But they were inconsistent sizes. This works well when you want to mince, because you can just keep going until everything’s tiny. But if you want to get some uniformly-sized slices or pieces, you need to be a bit more methodical. Generally, you want things to be of a consistent size so they cook in the same amount of time.

I slice a piece off the end to create a flat side I can lay things down on, and then slice the thing up in whatever dimensions I need.



Then I lay the thing down and slice lengthwise in the size I want.



Then turn the vegetable or fruit (in this case a potato), 90 degrees and slice across.



In this case, I was making sauteed potatoes.