How to Dice Potatoes

Video Transcript

"Hi, My name is Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today, I'm going to take a few minutes to show you how to make a really tasty New England Clam Chowder. All right, now it's potato time. See how these potatoes have a flat, kind of disc like shape; flatter on one side, than on the other? I'm going to cut them crossways. The reason being; I'll get a much larger cross section of the potato to deal with, as opposed to cutting it this way. The thing with these potatoes is if you want them to stay white; which I do, as soon as you chop them you're going to want to put them in water. The problem is, you don't want to keep them in the water for that long, because the water will actually start to leach the starch out. We're going to cut these really quickly, get them in the water, and then finish everything up; and get them into the soup as quickly as possible. A lot of recipes for this will tell you to cut your potatoes in advance, and cook them in advance. I disagree with that; because if you cut them small enough, and if you cook your soup the way I cook mine; they will actually cook just fine in the soup. If they do that, you also get the benefit of getting all the nutrients out of the potato and into your soup; as opposed to boiling it all out, and then dumping it down the drain. That would be a waste. I'm just making little half inch or so incisions across, and I'm just going to come back to it in a second, and finish that dice off. You'll notice, I'm keeping the potato together while I do it; because as long as the potato isn't exposed to air, we won't have any issues with discoloration. That way, it will only do it on the edges. You can do two at a time, if you want. You can line up two; like this. It's just hard to get them exactly right. That's the problem. Invariably, one will move and throw it off; although, we're not looking for a super uniform shape or anything, we're just looking for a half inch by half inch potato. You want to be careful if you're like me, and stick your finger out there like that. It's a good way to slice the end of your finger off, so I don't recommend doing it. It's just a bad habit I've picked up over the years. You should be doing it just like this; that's the textbook way. Grab a bowl of water real quick; a very shallow bowl of water, throw these in it, and go ahead and knock the rest of our prep out so we can get these out of the water. "