Multi‐point hot‐wire measurements in grid turbulence have been used to conditionally average the dissipation over inertial‐scale features of the turbulent field. Velocities were measured at 5 separate spatial points obtaining six simultaneous velocity components, at turbulent Rey‐ nolds numbersRe&lgr;of 160 and 230. The dissipation was approximated with pseudo‐ or surro‐ gate dissipation &egr;r′based on one or two velocity gradients. The conditioned dissipation &egr;r′inside the most intense large‐scale rotational regions of the flow is more than twice as large as the expected value of &egr;r′over the whole domain. Conditional averaging was also carried out over strong large‐scale fronts showing smaller excess in dissipation. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.