Hi everyone, today we are going to talk
about knife skills. Whether you're just
starting in the kitchen or have some
experienced knife skills are always a
good area to review and continue to
practice. So before we get started, I
want to go over some basics with your
cutting board. It's important to make
sure to include a damp paper towel
underneath to keep it from slipping.
We're going to be using a chef's knife
today a chef's knife is one of the best
kitchen tools you can have and you can
really do a lot with it the more
familiar you get. Now for proper holding
of the chef's knife, you're going to use
your forefinger and thumb to grip the
knife and then you're going to go ahead
and put the rest of your fingers around
the handle. And then with your other hand,
when you're cutting, you want to make a
claw. To make a claw you want to take
the tips of your fingers bend them in so
you don't accidentally cut those in
whatever you're cutting. And you're going
to use the knuckles and this portion of
your fingers help protect those tips of
your fingers while you're cutting with
the knife itself. You always want to keep
it with a tip on the cutting board.
You're going to keep making rocking
motions when you cut and the tip on the
cutting board is really going to help
you in controlling the size of pieces
that you're cutting. Now to go ahead and
show you what that looks like
we're going to go ahead and start with
this cucumber. We want to start with
our fingers making a claw. We're going
to hold on to that cucumber. We're going
to hold on to the knife again pinching it with the top two fingers and then
we're gonna start making rocking motions
and doing nice even slices. Once you get
familiar in making slices and you get
comfortable with holding the knife the
next area that we want to start with is
with slices and dicing.
So with this pepper here we're going to
go ahead and quarter it. And if we want to
slice the pepper we're going to go ahead
and take one of those quarter pieces
take your knife and in a rocking motion
come down you can cut them into nice
even slices. The next cut that we're
going to practice is a chop and for a
chop we went up to be bigger pieces so
about a half an inch piece. So we're
going to start by cutting like slices
and then we're going to take that rotate
it over and then cut them again about
half an inch pieces to create a rough
chop. This is a really good cut to do
in salads. And then a dice is a little
bit smaller than chopped. So for
dicing, we're going to do a quarter inch slices
first and then we're going to go ahead
and come on the other way so that we
have nice even squares .One of my
favorite tools in working with youth
when practicing cutting skills is a
lettuce knife. A lettuce knife is shaped
very similar to chef's knife so they can
get comfortable  practicing how to
hold it properly but it also has a
safety feature of being a much less
sharp blade so that there's less risk of
them cutting themselves if they forget to
use the claw and go back into normal hand
style. So it helps them really practice
that technique before switching over to
a chef's knife. A great item to use
when practicing knife skills with you as
a banana because lettuce knife blades
are less sharp it can be harder to get
through carrots and potatoes and some of
those vegetables. So banana is a great
starting point in getting youth
comfortable with practicing their
different knife skills practicing making
slices and practicing using that proper
cutting technique.
So as you practice cutting fruits and
vegetables you'll find that you'll have
a lot of chopped fruits and vegetables
at the end and what I like to do is practice
using different vegetables different
fruits putting them in storage
containers keeping them in the fridge
and then when I'm making meals later in
the week I have one step down in the
cooking process.
