mince
Cut into very small, fine pieces -- finer than a dice or chop. Common for garlic and ginger, where you want the flavor to distribute evenly rather than showing up as distinct pieces.
How to do it
Start by slicing or roughly chopping the ingredient into smaller pieces, then gather them into a pile. Use a rocking motion, repeatedly passing the blade through the pile and periodically scraping scattered pieces back toward the center, until the pieces reach the fineness you want. For herbs specifically, stop well before you'd think to -- continuing too long bruises them and turns them into a wet paste rather than fine, distinct pieces.
Common pitfalls
- Using a dull knife -- it crushes the ingredient instead of cutting it cleanly.
- Over-mincing herbs -- it releases too much moisture and damages the leaves.
- Adding minced garlic too early over high heat -- tiny pieces burn far faster than whole cloves or slices.
- Assuming finer is always better -- how finely something is minced changes how intensely its flavor comes through, not just how it looks.
Why it works
Mincing sharply increases surface area and ruptures a large number of plant cells at once, which has real flavor consequences. Garlic stores its flavor precursors in separate cellular compartments, and cutting damages those cells enough for enzymes to react with the precursors and create the sharp sulfur compounds responsible for garlic's characteristic pungency -- generally, the more thoroughly it's crushed or minced, the stronger that reaction becomes. Smaller pieces also simply cook faster, since heat has less distance to travel through them.
Equipment
A sharp chef's knife is usually all that's needed. A garlic press ruptures the cloves even more thoroughly than hand-mincing does, which produces a noticeably different, more intense flavor. A microplane is useful for ginger or garlic when something closer to a paste is what you want.