Okay, lovely people
Knife skills
Really really important
Life is short
You normally eat three times a day
You probably cook a lot of meals in your life
And sit there, clanking around taking lumps of your body off, and like just being slow and rubbish
Not good
So let's get you good at it
So there's four things in front of me right now
a small paring knife
Nice little darling here great for sort of little preparations, nipping things, slicing herbs
A really good all-round knife right
Everyone needs one, an essential okay?
Now not not so really all-around knife, but this is a
Carving knife
You can use it for carving meats and stuff
It does leave a little bit of a line, but it doesn't really bother me
But most importantly you got the teeth in it the serrated sort of jagged dagger edges
It's a really good sort of all-around carving knife there
And then the knife that you're going to use 90% of the time right—an 8 to 10 inch chef's knife
Absolutely Brilliant
Well-balanced, nice grip
You've got that thick kind of base here
And that base is also thick here so with little chicken legs, you can just nick them off,
You know and just literally break bones and bits and pieces like that,
and you've got that nice thick edge here
So that's what you need
We've got the sharpener here
Every time you use a knife
Bottom to tip
Bottom to tip
Just do it once on each side
There's three methods of chopping that I suggest you learn, okay?
And that will get you at a ninety nine percent of stuff
This first method I'm going to teach you—
the cross chop is brilliant
because hands and fingers are like this
There's no way on the knife
*Jamie demonstrating the cross chop*
And that is very very easy
Right?
It's safe.
No fingers. No limbs. No body part
anywhere near this knife
And then when you are chopping things
Use it almost like a dustpan and brush
Let's, for instance, hack up this onion
Let's just cross chop
So it's bad
It's hacking it right,
but then you keep going through it,
and then you're kind of—
it's almost like a food processor
It's gonna get fine eventually right,
but it's falling off so then you sweep it up and you put it in the middle
This is quite a slow way of doing this, but it is efficient and it is safe
Right you might see people doing that
Never ever ever ever do that
Always, fingers like that
I've seen people take their fingertips off if they do that, okay, don't do it
Hands like that
So let's just get rid of that
So I'm going to go straight in to tap chopping
The idea is that I put my thumb here and
I put my fingers here
And my fingers are tucked in and I pull my fingers as I'm cutting all the way down
And then I redo it and all the way down okay?
If you forget your thumb, and it comes out you're going to cut that off as well
And I have, we all have but I didn't have anyone telling me how to do it
so
The top of the knife is feeling that finger but not—
Obviously it knows where it is
I'm not bringing it up beyond here
You never ever bring this blade beyond the point where your finger goes in okay?
So never higher than there right?
slowly
as I'm slicing
Now you're going to go slow to start with and then you can start to pick up the speed
to the point
Where it doesn't matter anymore, okay?
Now the reality is because I know where my fingers are
Because I know what's happening until this point
At this point I've gone wobble again, see? 
Because I'm getting towards the end of the courgette
What do you do when you got wobble?
On a flat surface wobbling? No
Right?
But then you can stop again until then and you're wobbling again, then you go flat surface, right?
So chopping is all about non wobbly veg right?
you're in control of that
So let's just have a little go on this chili
That's a rock chopping
Chili's perfect for rock chopping
Let's change the angle
Let's show you like this
If you look at this chili now, it doesn't matter on going slow or fast
Notice fingers in 
Thumb pulling the fingers towards it
That little edge of my finger controlling the blades going
At no point is that blade ever go near a finger
It's vulnerable now,
So then we're much much more careful
And then we finish
That's a chilli
Practice makes perfect
If your fingers are always out the way you can't chop them off
It's a really good craft--
It's like learning to write. It's like learning to talk. It's like learning to ride a bike
It makes your cooking so much quicker and for the show-offs out there, you can style it out.
Good luck
