Hi everybody it is Chef Lesli
with Harmons thank you for
joining me. Today we're going to 
learn a little bit about knife
skills and knife maintenance. I 
have a 8 inch chef's knife here
that is pretty much my go to 
utensil in the kitchen maybe a
six inch or have a six inch 
knife to. My 10 inch knife I'll
use for heavier things like 
butternut squash and things
like that but an 8 inch is 
usually my go to knife. You you
know a Western style knife has 
this nice little rocking motion
to it it's like got this nice 
little swoop to it right.
Whereas an eastern style knife 
would have a flat a flat blade
all the way across. So this 
gives you a nice little rocking
motion when you're cutting 
things. So that's kind of the
classic French way the way that 
I learned in cooking school.
But basically the way you want 
to hold a knife properly is you
want to go ahead and just pinch 
your your index finger and your
thumb right there where the 
heel meets the handle and then
wrap all of your fingers around 
just like that. OK. Oftentimes
I'll see a little index finger 
coming out like that or I'll
see people choking back on the 
handle which neither is very
conducive to the proper way of 
cutting you're going to have
the most control when you're 
right there at the knife.
It might seem like you're a little 
bit too far up but really
you'll just get used to it.
That's really the proper way to 
do it. OK so let's talk a
little bit about knife 
maintenance really fast. You
always want a nice sharp knife 
OK. There's nothing worse than
a dull knife. I would recommend 
that you also have a honing
steel. Now this is usually a 
little bit stronger metal than
what your knife is made of. So 
if you have a kit that you
purchased a knife set the 
honing steel will come with
that. Rather than 
sharpening your knife it's
simply just bringing an already 
sharp edge back to its sharpest
point.
OK sharpening a knife actually 
will take the edge off of a
knife and give it a new edge. 
So honing is something you
should do it whenever you 
remember it. Remember to hone.
OK. So the really safe way to 
do that is so I just put a
towel down on a on a flat 
surface and then I basically
want imagine like two fingers 
the thickness of two fingers
just right there where the 
handle meets the honing steel
and then you want that angle to 
be consistent. You always want
to start at the base of your 
knife and do the entire length
of your knife.
OK because if you started 
halfway through the middle you
might get a burr or something 
and then that would lessen the
amount of knife that you can 
use. OK. And you want to do it
an equal number of times per 
side to simply get that edge a
little sharp. Now this is the 
way that I do it now. Right.
This is like the 2.0 version. 
But you should never really try
this before you kind of start 
to do it this way. All right.
That's kind of the safest way 
to do it. Now this is going to
look real freaky but I know 
that my knife is really sharp
if I can touch my
my thumbnail and it's kind of 
gritty like it kind of stabs a
little bit. If I had a piece of paper
Oh look I have parchment right 
here. You will know if your
knife was sharp by cutting 
into a piece of paper. So take
your knife.
That's pretty dang sharp. OK. A 
regular piece of paper would
show if it had a little jagged 
edges or something like that
you could continue to hone a 
couple more times but that is a
pretty darn great sharp knife. 
All right. So I'm going to cut
a couple of things today just 
to kind of show you some little
tricks behind what I do. I've 
got some green onions here. I
think they call them 
scallions on the East Coast.
I think they do. I love to just 
take off the bare minimum.
Right. I got a lot of people 
who are like Whoa hey I just
chop that don't waste that much 
onion that's ridiculous.
OK that's dumb. I just want to 
cut these little guys off. And
then in the recipe that I'm 
going to make here in a minute
I'm actually using the Greens 
the tops of these green onions
so I just want to trim the very 
tops off. And then what I like
to do is cut these on the bias 
to make them a little bit more
pretty. And this is also a 
really telltale indicator of
whether you have a sharp knife 
or not because you will get a
daisy chain of green onions
If your knife is not completely 
sharp. See I'm just kind of
rocking my knife back and 
forth. Now this is pretty much
101 cutting because 201 is me
shuttling my product
through my knife. Can you see 
that how I kind of moved it
this way versus me walking that 
way. So I've got just some nice
broken up. There are a couple 
pieces. Look at that. That's
crazy. But for the most part
We've got some nice individual 
green onions OK.
So those are real pretty and 
those are gonna go on our next
recipe. Let me tell you a 
little bit about a shallot. So
if your recipe calls for one 
shallot, this is not one
shallot. This is two
shallots. OK. They usually
come in two lobes. Sometimes 
you'll have the bronze part
around the whole entire thing 
and then there's actually a
layer of shallots that you 
need to be able to get to the
other shallot. But what I'd 
like to do is make sure that
you keep the root end on 
whether it's an onion whether
it's a shallot, just keep 
that root end on because he's
your friend. OK. We're gonna 
keep that. So the root ends
here. I'm right hand so the root 
end is down here like seven
o'clock and I'm going to just 
cut off the top of my shallot
and I'm going to
Just cut off this
Bronze part which is the skin.
Now here's my thing. If you 
can't get to that whole
peeling of that paper, I don't 
care if you just dive into that
first layer
And get that whole top off you 
know but there you go.
OK. So now I'm peeled and I 
have my little root end. OK. So
what I want to do is I want to 
impale my onion or my shallot
in this case with the tip of my 
knife and I kind of want to go
around the radius of the 
shallot and I'm using my claw
hand or my other hand to 
kind of guide. Now notice I'm
not cutting through to the end. 
of my shallot. I’m just kind
of going around the length of 
it. So if I opened it up you can
see it's kind of
fanned out. OK so that's my 
first step. Now let's just say
I wanted to dice it. So I'm 
going to dice. I'm going to use
my little claw hand as my guide 
and I'm just going to start to
make tiny little slices. And 
I've kind of already got a nice
dice going on here. The other 
thing that I do is I kind of
take my pinky and my thumb and 
I kind of keep the shallot
together. Because sometimes if 
you put a lot of pressure on
the top it can kind of make it
flattened and then you start to
slide. Now sometimes you will 
start to slide toward the root
end and maybe
Be risk hurting your finger. So 
I just tilt it over onto its
base and I just kind of cut a 
little bit more at that until I
get to have a safe base again 
and then I'm going to just cut
the rest. Now notice I'm using 
this little root end as a
handle. Now I can just discard 
that. OK so I'm going to go
ahead and just put all of this 
whenever you have product on
your board. You don't really 
want to scrape like that
because your board will come 
off on your knife since it's so
nice and sharp
Rather go parallel to your 
board to kind of get everything
off you could use a bench 
scraper if you wanted to. In our
in our knife skills classes we 
often will use bench scrapers
but you can just use your hand. 
That's fine. And then when
you're ever not
using your knife
I'd just like to keep it away 
from me with the blade away from
me because heaven forbid I'm 
around here and I'm like
knicking myself or something. 
Right. So just keep it out of
your way. Last but not least I 
want to show you a quick little
trick. So just take to like 
size pieces of Tupperware tops.
And I've got a couple of green 
or grape tomatoes here. I guess
these are cherries. Wow. I've 
been using grapes so often I
didn't realize these were 
really round.
OK. So you want to make sure 
you get kind of like you know
it's not too tight in there but 
just enough. And then you want
to go ahead and put this like 
side down. All right. Take your
sharp knife. And here we go. 
Just put a nice flat hand on
there. And start doing a seesaw 
motion. Straight through. And
holy nut. Look at that. I just 
dispatched like twelve tomatoes
instead of one at a time. I can 
not even begin to tell you how
much time it takes to 
individually do this.
So hopefully that will just 
save you gobs and gobs of time
in the future. Bell pepper. So. 
What I like to do with the bell
pepper and there are many 
different schools of thought on
bell peppers. But the way that 
I like to dispatch my bell
pepper is I'll just cut the top 
off. I'll cut the booty off.
And then I like to make a very 
small incision so it doesn't go
all the way through. And then 
what I do is I kind of insert
my knife and then I just kind 
of start to go around cutting
that membrane off
And getting those seeds out. 
OK. And then once I rolled it
around
Look there you go there's your 
whole entire core right there.
Now let's just say
I wanted to do slices
Really fast to do you know the 
difference between a green a
yellow and orange and red bell 
pepper. It's simply ripeness.
So it's the exact same fruit in 
different phases of its
ripeness. So obviously the Reds 
tend to be way sweeter than the
Greens.
OK. So as far as cutting is 
concerned you just kind of I've
seen in our cooking classes 
some people will do kind of the
shiny part but that kind of 
freaks me out I just see that
that's a little bit more gritty 
and coarse so I always go on
this side of my bell pepper and 
I have my hand and I'm kind of
just holding down my bell 
pepper product and I'm just
doing my rocking motion and I'm 
kind of just making nice
little matchstick slices. OK. 
Now once upon a time I was
teaching my husband this 
technique and I accidentally
called his name and he kept 
cutting and looked up and
sliced himself.
Amateur mistake everybody can 
do it, right? But basically if
somebody calls your name stop 
cutting and look at them, right?
I mean I like to think that I'm 
a multitasker but I can't
really cut and
Cut and get somebody’s
attention at the exact same
time. So there's some nice 
little bell pepper matchsticks.
That would be great for a stir 
fry. I hope that you have
enjoyed these tips. Now that 
I've got some tomato on here 
acid, acid is bad for knives. 
Lemon juice and tomatoes. You
want to make sure that you just 
wipe down your knives. OK.
Way more tips and tricks.
Go to HarmonsGrocery.com and 
check out our videos. Thanks for joining.
