Dicing is a culinary knife cut in which the food item is cut into small blocks or dice. This may be done for aesthetic reasons or to create uniformly sized pieces to ensure even cooking. Dicing allows for distribution of flavour and texture throughout the dish, as well as a somewhat quicker cooking time.
Technically there are three types of dicing: large, medium, and small. Large is usually a 20mm (3/4 inch) cube, medium 10mm (1/2 in.), and small 5mm (1/4 in.) Brunoise is an especially small size, produced from further cutting of julienne-style food. In home cooking most people regard dicing to be any size cube, often the size of a regular set of game dice.
Dicing usually applies to vegetables prepared in this way but it can also apply to the preparation of meat or fish.