- Hi, I'm Chef Josh.
For our first week of cooking camp,
we're gonna be working with knives.
What the differences are
between different types,
how to use them safely,
and most importantly, how to hold them.
So here we have a couple
different types of knives.
We've got a bread knife, a chef's knife,
a Santoku knife, and a paring knife.
Now, those names are nice,
but they're not really that important.
What's important is that
this knife has serrations,
which allows you to cut
through things like bread
or tomatoes that might otherwise squish
if you don't have the
teeth to cut through.
We can just call this one a large knife,
a medium knife, and a small knife.
People ask me, "What type
of knife should I be using?"
What's most important is
that you're comfortable
with what you're using.
So for me, this is my favorite knife.
Now that we've seen the
different types of knives,
let's focus on how to use it safely.
What that really means is
how to hold your knife.
Let's practice this grip
with this chef's knife.
So for your grip, the most common mistake,
dangerous mistake that
I see, is people holding
with the finger on top of the blade.
It might feel comfortable, but
there's a pretty easy chance
that your knife can slip side to side.
You don't have a lot of stability.
Instead, let's put your thumb on one side,
your finger pinching it
accross the other one,
and you wrap you fingers
around the back behind it.
You can hold a little bit
further up if you like,
or a little bit further back,
but just make sure that your
thumb and your pointer finger
are on the sides of the knife.
Now that we can safely and
correctly hold our knife,
let's put these new skills to use.
The first thing we're going
to do is chop an onion.
For the onion here, even though
this is my favorite knife,
I'm going to switch to
something a little bit smaller,
because our vegetable's
a little bit smaller.
First thing we're gonna do,
because this onion's rolling,
is cut off the end that
doesn't have the roots on it.
The roots are what hold it together,
and we're going to keep
them attached to the onion
as long as we can.
So cut off the other end.
We'll set it down on its flat surface.
Now we're safer.
I'm gonna cut the onion in half
right through that root.
You can see that the root is still intact
and that everything's flowing
to it inside the onion.
That's what's holding it together.
Now it's gonna be easier
for us to peel this onion.
We can really get to those layers.
Once we've got our onion here,
we're gonna make cuts almost
to the base, but not quite.
Again, that root's what's
keeping everything together.
Once we've gotten the
cuts going across it,
I'm gonna cut in the other direction.
What we're left with,
once we break it apart
are little diced onions.
Along with cutting onions,
we're gonna work with
a bunch of different types of vegetables.
On our first week of
camp, we're gonna make
a black bean and corn salsa.
It's gonna let us really put
those skills to practice,
make sure that we're all safe,
make sure we're all knowledgeable,
and we'll put out something
delicious in the end.
