Oh that's great, you made some carrot sticks. 
And you think you got knife skills?
You got nothin'.
Prepare to learn... some great knife skills. 
From me!
Where did you cut yourself? Under the nail. 
Took the nail off.
Let’s start with some basic knife maintenance.
First of all, you wanna keep your knife clean,
for a couple of reasons.
You don't want to infect whatever you're cutting,
and if you end up cutting yourself
...well, you don't want to infect yourself.
So just using soap and water is
a good way to get rid of bacteria
And when you do clean your knife, don't ever soak it.
It can destroy the blade, making it rust,
it can destroy the handle...
And, if you have soapy water, and it's submerged in it
Someone may come along and not realize your super sharp knife is in there and cut themselves.
It's a bad jam.
Speaking of sharpening, you always want to
keep your knife super-duper sharp.
For one reason, when you have a dull knife
you have to apply way more pressure to
whatever it is you're cutting.
And when you're applying that pressure, 
and it's not biting into it, it can slip!
And even a dull knife can take your finger clean off!
So - to keep your knives sharp, you want to get
that whetstone out
...or send them off for professional sharpening
at least two times a year.
You probably already know the basics of chopping, mincing, and dicing, that kind of stuff...
But let's get super French with it, shall we?
Let's get culinary.
We're gonna start with what's called the chiffonade -
or chiffonade (heavy accent).
Which, in French, means 'little tiny ribbons.'
You use this for leafy vegetables and leafy herbs
So you take some basil leaves for example
and you start with the biggest and stack 'em up
going to the smallest
Then you roll them up tightly, and start cutting little slices from the end working inward.
When you're done, you unroll them,
and you have pretty little ribbons.
Chiffonades of your herbs that you can
sprinkle on a nice salad.
Next up we have 'batonnet' which, in French, 
means 'little sticks'
And that's exactly what you do to say
zucchini or carrots or something like that.
You want to start by lopping off the ends,
which we call 'topping and tailing'
Then you cut the whole thing into
a nice rectangle.
And then you start slicing
into 1/4" strips, lengthwise.
Then you take those strips,
turn 'em over, stack 'em up
and cut those into 1/4" strips.
Then you cut your 1/4" x 1/4" strips
into about 3" long segments
And buddy - you have some cucumber strips
that are ready to be eaten right then
Or - you can boil 'em for some reason
and they'll cook uniformly.
Lastly, we have the 'tournée' cut.
Let's say you hate how potatoes look
when they're roasted on your plate
You can't stand it!
Tournée is right up your alley.
You take a potato,
cut off the ends
Then you take a good paring knife
or something called a bird's beak knife
and you pare the sharp edges off
Until you basically whittle the potato down
into what looks like a mini, misshapen football
The tournée cut generates a ton of food waste,
but at least you won't have ugly potatoes on your plate.
So now you can get all French with your knife!
And to hone your skills even further,
go to HowStuffWorks.com.
And look up 
"Top 5 Knife Skills You Should Know"
And while you're here, go ahead and subscribe
and leave us a comment about YOUR knife skills below.
