Kitchen Vocabulary: 'Dicing' Mango Salsa

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Teaching your kids to cook can be beneficial in a few ways. Learning cooking vocabulary words is just one skill your kids can learn along the way. This is the first post in our Kitchen Vocabulary Blog Series where we'll be picking recipes that focus on vocab words kids can learn in the kitchen. Cutting and utilizing knife skills is a big part of a lot of recipes, but does your kid chef know what the word 'dice' means? 

Our Kitchen Vocabulary Word this week is Dice. To dice means to cut something into smaller pieces or cubes. Dicing is used in salsa to cut the ingredients into finer pieces that are easier to dip into. This mango salsa recipe is a refreshing option for summer and chock-full of knife skills exercises for you and your kid chef to learn together. 

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Mango Salsa

Serves 2-4

Prep time: 20 minutes

Inspired by A Beautiful Mess

Kitchen Vocabulary Word: Dice

Ingredients

  • 2 ripe mangos
  • 2 ripe tomatoes
  • 1/3 of a medium white onion
  • 1/3 cup chopped cilantro
  • 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 lime
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
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Tools

  • Kid chef knife (buy here on Amazon)
  • Grown-up chef knife
  • Medium sized bowl
  • Large cutting board
  • Large mixing spoon (for mixing and serving)
  • Vegetable Peeler

Recipe Steps

  • Wash hands
  • Wash the tomatoes and cilantro to rinse off any germs.
  • **Grown-up** Peel the mangos with the vegetable peeler and throw out the skin.
  • **Grown-up** Core the mangos with the grown-up chef knife by cutting larger chunks of the mango off from the center. There is a hard core in the middle of the mango that you do not want to include.
  • Take the larger chunks of mango and cut into strips with the kid chef knife. 
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  • Dice the strips of mango with the kid chef knife into cubes like you would see in a salsa. 
  • Place the diced mango into a medium sized bowl.
  • **Grown-up** Slice off the top of the tomato with a grown-up knife.
  • Take the tomatoes and slice in half with the kid chef knife.
  • Place the tomatoes flat side down and cut into small strips.
  • Continue to dice the tomatoes into smaller cube pieces.
  • Dice the tomatoes into finer pieces like you would see in a salsa with the kid chef knife.
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  • Place the tomato pieces into the same medium sized bowl.
  • **Grown-up** Take the skin off of the outside of the white onion. Cut about 1/3 of the onion off to use for the salsa. Chop and dice the onion into finer pieces with the grown-up chef knife.
  • Add the onion to the bowl. 
  • Rinse the cutting board and knife to get rid of the onion residue.
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  • Pull off the leaves of the cilantro. With your fingers, tear the leaves into very fine pieces to act as a garnish in the salsa. 
  • Add the cilantro to the bowl and begin to mix all of the ingredients together with a mixing spoon.
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  • Add 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder to the bowl.
  • Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the bowl.
  • **Grown-up** Use the grown-up knife to cut the lime in half.
  • Squeeze the full lime over the bowl to add some zing to your salsa.
  • Mix it all together one more time and finish it off with a few full cilantro leaves.
  • Nom with your favorite dipper, we love cucumbers!
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**Grown-Up Tips**

  • Buy your mangos in advance to make sure they are ripe when you're ready to make some salsa. Ripe mangos have a more reddish color and are soft to the touch just like avocados.
  • We decided to use garlic powder instead of minced garlic but you can always opt for 1/2 tablespoon minced garlic to get a more powerful garlic taste.
  • There is A LOT of cutting and dicing in this recipe. If you feel like the prep is taking a while with your kid chef, feel free to help them dice the tomatoes and mangos after you do the onion. 
  • Choose veggie dippers like cucumbers as an alternate to tortilla chips with your salsa to add another healthy element to this yummy fruity salsa!
  • Is your kid chef sensitive to onions? Make sure to rinse every tool off after cutting onions to prevent any unwanted tears.
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About the Author & Photographer

Preston Arment is a Content Marketing Intern for Nomster Chef. She is a rising Junior Television-Radio major with minors in Journalism and Integrated Marketing Communications at Ithaca College. She has previously interned with Radius Books and the Syracuse Chiefs.