Chapters and Real Time Transcription
Today, we're going to talk about
probably the most basic thing.
If you can start to get this and get your head wrapped around
the importance of this, it's going to be really the gateway
to being able to make food taste delicious, especially when it comes
to things like vegetables or making meats, not like little pieces of rubber in your
mouth, but these delectable, wonderful flavor explosions.
The basic motto of our
Healthy Kitchen Academy is the unapologetic pursuit of deliciousness.
It's not really my quote.
It's a quote from Harvard Medical School, from the School of Public Health,
where I've done some of my chef, coach training.
I really believe in that.
That if it isn't something that you
thoroughly enjoy, that you get the deepest experience of
pleasure from, then for the most part, most of your meals are not going to be
ones that you are going to feel really satisfied from.
Pleasure should be a big part of that.
That starts by some really basic things
like learning how to cut things appropriately.
You might say, Well, why?
What's the big deal?
Just chop it up, throw it in a pot.
If it's a slow cooker and you're going to cook it all day until everything is
just mush, well, probably doesn't make much difference.
But if you're wanting to do more precision cooking, like you want to make a really
good stir fry, then every vegetable has to be cooked.
First of all, each vegetable has to be cooked equally so that you don't have
a piece of broccoli that's mushed and a piece of broccoli that's raw.
You also have different things in that recipe that have to be cooked at
different times and in a way that comes out just perfect.
Every ingredient has to all just explode in your mouth with flavor and
with crispness and with the textures that you're looking for.
It starts with cutting things with some accuracy and with some logic.
To be able to cut things, of course, you need to have some cutting utensils.
That starts with at least a couple of good knives.
I would say the most important investment
you're going to make as an aspiring chef is going to be a chef's knife.
Two main things to think about,
there are the European style, and then there are more the Asian style,
really more the Japanese style, where you have a knife that's cut
to an angle, which is essentially like a razor, which is a Japanese knife.
It's got a bevel that's about 15 degrees,
so it's quite steep, and it means that the sharp edge is
very thin for a longer distance, and that leaves the knife much more fragile.
But when it's handled correctly and when
you treat it right, these knives are amazing.
This is my favorite knife in the world.
It looks really simple.
It just is one piece of metal, but it's really balanced.
It feels good in the hand.
When I look at the edge carefully, I can see maybe one tiny little ding.
It's never been abused.
It's been treated right.
A knife that is a little bit of an investment up from...
This is not a super expensive knife,
but you're talking around about the $100 mark.
I'd consider keeping it simple.
And realistically,
a European knife is going to be generally a little bit easier for most people.
It's a knife that has a 20-degree bevel rather than a 15-degree bevel.
That 20-degree bevel means that there's less sharp area, meaning that there's less
thinness to the blade near the sharp surface.
It tends to be a bit more durable.
You're going to be more likely to be able
to get through bones with it or hack things a bit.
You don't have to be quite as careful.
Then also the garden variety sharpeners that are out there are really mostly
designed for the European style 20-degree blade.
Here's the thing, if you're going to pick up a Japanese-style knife,
don't just go out and buy a cheap sharpener and think it's going to work.
It's going to ruin the knife potentially.
You have to sharpen a stone or a knife like this generally with a stone,
unless it specifically gives you, and there are some, if you went to a knife
shop, they would guide you and you could buy a sharpener that you can either pick
the European style or the Japanese style bevel.
It's an important consideration.
A knife is only as good as it is sharp.
If you don't keep your knife sharp,
it doesn't matter how good they are, they're no good at all.
The thing that I notice when I go over to someone's house and maybe help
with dinner is it's actually rare to find sharp knives in the drawer.
It's amazing that everybody spends
time cooking something, at least some of the week, but yet
very few people stop to consider how important it is to keep their knife sharp.
A sharp knife is where the rubber meets the road, basically.
You might think, Well, it's scary.
I'm scared of the sharp knife.
Well, realistically,
if you have a sharp knife, you're going to be able to cut with more
precision and you're not going to be using the awkward forces and maybe have, say,
a vegetable tip on you or something because you're not getting through it,
you're less likely to cut yourself with a sharp knife.
But of course, if you're not using good technique and you have a really sharp
knife, you might end up with some missing parts at some point.
It's always going to be safety first.
If you feel intimidated by knives,
and that's why you haven't developed your skills, I would highly encourage you
to invest in another piece of equipment, which is a safety cut-resistant glove.
This is one made by Cuesenart.
I'm imagining that if Cuesenart puts their name on this, that it's unlikely to result
in an amputation in someone who is using it correctly.
But if you have a glove on for the hand that stabilizes your food,
when you're learning your knife skills, you can start getting a much more,
I wouldn't say aggressive, but you can start getting more efficient.
Because one of the reasons why people
don't bother with cutting things properly is they feel like it takes too much time.
It takes too much time.
But what we're going to try to do to convince you that that's not right is
that the more organized you are and the more orderly your meal is before
you even get started, the easier the whole process is.
It starts with a good knife, a knife that is balanced,
that's comfortable, that has and keeps a sharp edge and maintaining that edge.
Then it's about technique.
An important companion for a chef knife,
because you can see this knife is relatively small.
It's not a big, thick knife.
It's a bench scraper.
This is a really handy additional thing because once you finish cutting,
it's nice to have this to be able to scoop things up, put it into the bowl.
Otherwise, you're going in multiple times with your knife like this to get things
transferred across or just using your hands.
Then it's just a bit awkward.
This is a great investment.
Now, that brings me to another point, and that is if you start to go online
and look at how to make Asian food, you'll probably notice that a lot of
good Asian cooks, they will use a cleaver for everything.
In Chinese cooking, it's almost nothing but cleaver in many
cases, and they become very skillful with the cleaver.
The cleaver is a remarkable knife.
This one has a little bit of a round edge
to it, which means you can do, and we're going to teach you this,
the typical cut that you get with a chef's knife rather than just chop, chop, chop.
If you have a totally flat blade,
you're mostly constrained to going chop, chop, chop.
Whereas with a more curved blade,
it's curved because it's designed to sweep like this.
It's really more like a saw.
Because you're using the...
On a microscopic level,
you would see almost like the edge of a sharp saw blade.
When you go to the sharp edge
of the knife, it's not a perfectly smooth surface.
That rough but very sharp surface, when it, say, encounters a tomato,
if you just go down on a tomato like this, you'll just go squish.
But if you go like this, you're actually sawing through the tomato
with these microscopic little defects in the very, very edge of the blade.
That's why I like this cleaver here.
It has a little bit of a round edge.
It means that when you want to, you can cut like this.
When you want to, you can chop, chop, chop.
Then it's got the built-in.
Instead of having one of these as well, you've got this built-in.
That's a really handy thing.
When you start prepping for a meal,
you have your bench scraper built right into it.
This is the other thing that I'd highly suggest.
I mean, everybody has to have a paring knife.
You can get really cheap paring knives.
They're probably fine.
Almost the throwaway kind where you don't
even bother to keep them sharp just when they get dull, you chuck them.
They're 10 bucks or whatever.
But it's probably worthwhile investing in a pretty good paring knife.
This one, it's a European paring knife,
and it's a 20-degree bevel like a European knife generally is.
That means you can use a lot of garden variety sharpeners for it.
Just as important to keep a paring knife sharp as it is any other knife.
Because again, say, if you've got a paring knife in your hand,
you're usually using it like this where you're turning and pushing.
You don't want excessive forces to be
involved so that you end up slipping and having this go through your thumb.
If you're intimidated by knives,
then you can use a paring knife with a protective glove.
I'd highly recommend that if you want to start getting more skillful and really
start pushing the boundaries of how fast you're working and how efficiently is
getting one of these gloves is a really good idea.
But there are some other tools that I
think are pretty well essential for chopping, slicing, cutting vegetables.
The thing that I use most often is a pair of scissors.
It's really worthwhile getting some good scissors, essentially kitchen scissors,
because there are times when you just want to chop up a small amount of something
and you want to do it in a way that's quite controlled and fine.
There's nothing better than a pair of scissors to quickly do the job,
like green onions or say you want a little bit of celery and some soup that you're
making one cup off, then scissors are just great.
You can just quickly zip through some food like that.
Now, scissors are not expensive,
but you can spend a bit more and get one that's got a built-in cutting board.
I mean, it looks like a really cool idea, but does it work any better than scissors?
Maybe.
Certainly nice clean cut.
There are times when I use this to zip through some things.
But realistically, once your knife skills
are up, this will probably sit in your drawer.
I wouldn't super recommend this one.
If you want to make fine, shredded vegetables,
finer than the Julienne, then you would really enjoy this.
You get these at Asian food stores,
and the way they work, it looks like a peeler, but look what happens.
You go like this and end up with these really nice little strips.
Great for salad, great for stir, fry.
I use this all the time.
This… To do this with a chef knife, we're going to show you how to do it,
but it's a lot more work than what I just did there.
You can zip through a whole carrot in a few seconds.
Of course, you're going to want a peeler.
But in a lot of cases,
when the peel is quite thin, like say, a carrot or a potato, I love these.
They're like pot scrubbers with woven stainless steel, I think is what it is.
I just get this under the water and I give it a good scrub because there's a lot
of nutrition in the peel of a lot of vegetables.
You don't want to necessarily discard that.
You just want to get rid of the ugly stuff and the dirt.
Then if there's any little dead bits or something, you can use your paring knife
and trim those off or trim the end off, that thing.
A peeler, but also having some of those pot scrubbers is a really good idea.
Another thing that if you really want to get good at Asian cooking,
this is one of the things that I found to be really useful.
For instance, you take your onion,
you washed it, trimmed off any dead bits like the ends of the green.
Then what you'll do is you'll take your
onion, you'll lay it down like this, and you just run this thing along like so.
Then when you go through and cut it,
these beautiful little strips that can be put onto like I said,
garnish on the top of a bowl or on the top of a soup, that thing.
It's nice when they're really fine like that.
It doesn't overpower your taste buds with a big burst of onion.
It's just this nice, subtle addition as a garnish.
You can chop those up as fine as you want into short lengths if you wish.
That's quite a useful tool if you want to make a lot of Asian food,
but really to garnish any bowl if you're using green onions or celery.
In terms of grading, there's two things that are pretty essential.
One is just your basic table-top grader like this.
This one has lots of different surfaces.
The most common one would be the coarse one.
You might use that for making a coleslaw-type cabbage.
The other one that's very useful is this
was adopted from carpentry, I think, for finishing carpenters that need fine...
I think it's called a microplane.
In fact, actually, the name on it is called microplane.
Some of them come with handles.
This is the cheaper one.
It just comes with a protective cover, and then it's a very fine grater.
You can use this for especially like
ginger, garlic, when you want to get the zest off of a lemon, that thing.
This is a very useful tool.
One last implement I'm going to talk about is the mandolin.
There's a gazillion different mandolins.
There's like endless infomercials on the best one.
But if you go to chef school, which I did for a little while
at the Culinary Institute of America, I learned that every chef in the world
must acquire one of these to begin chef school.
It is a Japanese mandolin called Benrinner.
I'm not sure that's the exact
pronunciation, but that's how it's spelt Benrinner, Ben Reiner.
It's a Japanese mandolin.
It's sometimes simple and solid is better than fancy.
I have had a lot of mandolins over
the years that end up just sitting in the cupboard doing nothing.
This one I actually use. Very useful.
It comes with three different blades,
depending on how thick that you want the...
This is for making shredded or sliced things.
If you want to say make slices of potatoes and just round even slices,
then you would take the teeth blades out and you would just use the flat blade.
And then it has a protective...
You'd always use this protective
tool with little grippers, but I would never dream of using
a mandolin without using a protective glove.
We're not going to cover sharpening today,
but it is essential that you know how to hone your knife.
It's something you really should do
pretty well with every use or before or after every use.
The reason is that a knife that's properly
sharpened has an edge that if you were to see it
in a microscope, you would see the sharp part is actually very thin.
What that means is that as you're cutting
with normal use on a proper cutting board, doing everything carefully,
eventually what happens is the edge begins to curl, and it's probably like this.
There are spots that are curled this way, spots that are curled this way,
little jaggy bits start to point away from where they
should, and so you don't get the full use of the sharp edge.
That's where the hone comes in or the knife steel.
There's a number of ways to do this.
Chefs, when they're really good at this,
they'll probably be doing it more like this, which I'm a little bit nervous of.
Even though there's a sword, it's got this thing to protect your hand.
It's pretty small.
I don't trust myself,
to be honest with you, going towards me with a sharp knife like this.
The safest way, they always have a little sharp tip here.
If you have a cutting board already out before you put your knife away or before
you use it, what you'll do is you will line this up like that.
Remember, what knife do I have?
Is it a Japanese knife?
Is it a European knife?
If it's a European knife,
then you're going to angle it more like this, 20 degrees,
if it's a Japanese knife, more like that, which is more like 15.
The idea is that you go down like this.
There we go.
You try to get your wrist locked into a position where
it's going to hold that same angle all the way through, and there's a certain feel.
If you're on the edge, you should feel a bit of friction there and that sound.
You can go multiple times one way,
and then you can use the same hand or you can switch hands.
If you're a little bit ambidextrous, it's a little bit easier to do it like this.
But most people are not.
I'm a lefty, so I'm going to go like this.
What we're trying to do is to remove what
they call a bur or that curved-over edge.
If you're careful, you can sometimes feel a bur that's developed on the knife.
This one I hone a lot.
Actually, there is a little bit of bur still there.
You go like this.
The idea is that it does take a little bit
of metal off, but it's mostly just straightening
that sharp, sharp edge, getting it back to pointing the right direction.
It's going to be useful for you.
You just spend a few seconds doing that just about every time,
and you're going to have a knife that will really, really stay sharp.
One last thing I want to mention about
caring for your knives, and that is to protect the edge.
Don't just throw your knives back in a drawer.
Never put a good knife in a dishwasher.
It takes two seconds to clean it
by hand under the sink and dry it off and put it away.
Be respectful of the edge of this blade.
This is a big deal, especially if you have a Japanese knife that's more delicate.
If you're going to put it away
in a drawer, buy some edge guards so that you can put them away like that.
That is essential.
Then one of the things that's a good idea is to get a block to put your knives in.
Or what I really like is to have
the magnetic holder that sits right near your work area so that you can see your
knives and you can select them really easily.
These magnetic ones are great.
Really makes it very convenient.
But it also protects that delicate sharp edge that you're trying to maintain.
If you can start to get this and get your head wrapped around
the importance of this, it's going to be really the gateway
to being able to make food taste delicious, especially when it comes
to things like vegetables or making meats, not like little pieces of rubber in your
mouth, but these delectable, wonderful flavor explosions.
The basic motto of our
Healthy Kitchen Academy is the unapologetic pursuit of deliciousness.
It's not really my quote.
It's a quote from Harvard Medical School, from the School of Public Health,
where I've done some of my chef, coach training.
I really believe in that.
That if it isn't something that you
thoroughly enjoy, that you get the deepest experience of
pleasure from, then for the most part, most of your meals are not going to be
ones that you are going to feel really satisfied from.
Pleasure should be a big part of that.
That starts by some really basic things
like learning how to cut things appropriately.
You might say, Well, why?
What's the big deal?
Just chop it up, throw it in a pot.
If it's a slow cooker and you're going to cook it all day until everything is
just mush, well, probably doesn't make much difference.
But if you're wanting to do more precision cooking, like you want to make a really
good stir fry, then every vegetable has to be cooked.
First of all, each vegetable has to be cooked equally so that you don't have
a piece of broccoli that's mushed and a piece of broccoli that's raw.
You also have different things in that recipe that have to be cooked at
different times and in a way that comes out just perfect.
Every ingredient has to all just explode in your mouth with flavor and
with crispness and with the textures that you're looking for.
It starts with cutting things with some accuracy and with some logic.
To be able to cut things, of course, you need to have some cutting utensils.
That starts with at least a couple of good knives.
I would say the most important investment
you're going to make as an aspiring chef is going to be a chef's knife.
Two main things to think about,
there are the European style, and then there are more the Asian style,
really more the Japanese style, where you have a knife that's cut
to an angle, which is essentially like a razor, which is a Japanese knife.
It's got a bevel that's about 15 degrees,
so it's quite steep, and it means that the sharp edge is
very thin for a longer distance, and that leaves the knife much more fragile.
But when it's handled correctly and when
you treat it right, these knives are amazing.
This is my favorite knife in the world.
It looks really simple.
It just is one piece of metal, but it's really balanced.
It feels good in the hand.
When I look at the edge carefully, I can see maybe one tiny little ding.
It's never been abused.
It's been treated right.
A knife that is a little bit of an investment up from...
This is not a super expensive knife,
but you're talking around about the $100 mark.
I'd consider keeping it simple.
And realistically,
a European knife is going to be generally a little bit easier for most people.
It's a knife that has a 20-degree bevel rather than a 15-degree bevel.
That 20-degree bevel means that there's less sharp area, meaning that there's less
thinness to the blade near the sharp surface.
It tends to be a bit more durable.
You're going to be more likely to be able
to get through bones with it or hack things a bit.
You don't have to be quite as careful.
Then also the garden variety sharpeners that are out there are really mostly
designed for the European style 20-degree blade.
Here's the thing, if you're going to pick up a Japanese-style knife,
don't just go out and buy a cheap sharpener and think it's going to work.
It's going to ruin the knife potentially.
You have to sharpen a stone or a knife like this generally with a stone,
unless it specifically gives you, and there are some, if you went to a knife
shop, they would guide you and you could buy a sharpener that you can either pick
the European style or the Japanese style bevel.
It's an important consideration.
A knife is only as good as it is sharp.
If you don't keep your knife sharp,
it doesn't matter how good they are, they're no good at all.
The thing that I notice when I go over to someone's house and maybe help
with dinner is it's actually rare to find sharp knives in the drawer.
It's amazing that everybody spends
time cooking something, at least some of the week, but yet
very few people stop to consider how important it is to keep their knife sharp.
A sharp knife is where the rubber meets the road, basically.
You might think, Well, it's scary.
I'm scared of the sharp knife.
Well, realistically,
if you have a sharp knife, you're going to be able to cut with more
precision and you're not going to be using the awkward forces and maybe have, say,
a vegetable tip on you or something because you're not getting through it,
you're less likely to cut yourself with a sharp knife.
But of course, if you're not using good technique and you have a really sharp
knife, you might end up with some missing parts at some point.
It's always going to be safety first.
If you feel intimidated by knives,
and that's why you haven't developed your skills, I would highly encourage you
to invest in another piece of equipment, which is a safety cut-resistant glove.
This is one made by Cuesenart.
I'm imagining that if Cuesenart puts their name on this, that it's unlikely to result
in an amputation in someone who is using it correctly.
But if you have a glove on for the hand that stabilizes your food,
when you're learning your knife skills, you can start getting a much more,
I wouldn't say aggressive, but you can start getting more efficient.
Because one of the reasons why people
don't bother with cutting things properly is they feel like it takes too much time.
It takes too much time.
But what we're going to try to do to convince you that that's not right is
that the more organized you are and the more orderly your meal is before
you even get started, the easier the whole process is.
It starts with a good knife, a knife that is balanced,
that's comfortable, that has and keeps a sharp edge and maintaining that edge.
Then it's about technique.
An important companion for a chef knife,
because you can see this knife is relatively small.
It's not a big, thick knife.
It's a bench scraper.
This is a really handy additional thing because once you finish cutting,
it's nice to have this to be able to scoop things up, put it into the bowl.
Otherwise, you're going in multiple times with your knife like this to get things
transferred across or just using your hands.
Then it's just a bit awkward.
This is a great investment.
Now, that brings me to another point, and that is if you start to go online
and look at how to make Asian food, you'll probably notice that a lot of
good Asian cooks, they will use a cleaver for everything.
In Chinese cooking, it's almost nothing but cleaver in many
cases, and they become very skillful with the cleaver.
The cleaver is a remarkable knife.
This one has a little bit of a round edge
to it, which means you can do, and we're going to teach you this,
the typical cut that you get with a chef's knife rather than just chop, chop, chop.
If you have a totally flat blade,
you're mostly constrained to going chop, chop, chop.
Whereas with a more curved blade,
it's curved because it's designed to sweep like this.
It's really more like a saw.
Because you're using the...
On a microscopic level,
you would see almost like the edge of a sharp saw blade.
When you go to the sharp edge
of the knife, it's not a perfectly smooth surface.
That rough but very sharp surface, when it, say, encounters a tomato,
if you just go down on a tomato like this, you'll just go squish.
But if you go like this, you're actually sawing through the tomato
with these microscopic little defects in the very, very edge of the blade.
That's why I like this cleaver here.
It has a little bit of a round edge.
It means that when you want to, you can cut like this.
When you want to, you can chop, chop, chop.
Then it's got the built-in.
Instead of having one of these as well, you've got this built-in.
That's a really handy thing.
When you start prepping for a meal,
you have your bench scraper built right into it.
This is the other thing that I'd highly suggest.
I mean, everybody has to have a paring knife.
You can get really cheap paring knives.
They're probably fine.
Almost the throwaway kind where you don't
even bother to keep them sharp just when they get dull, you chuck them.
They're 10 bucks or whatever.
But it's probably worthwhile investing in a pretty good paring knife.
This one, it's a European paring knife,
and it's a 20-degree bevel like a European knife generally is.
That means you can use a lot of garden variety sharpeners for it.
Just as important to keep a paring knife sharp as it is any other knife.
Because again, say, if you've got a paring knife in your hand,
you're usually using it like this where you're turning and pushing.
You don't want excessive forces to be
involved so that you end up slipping and having this go through your thumb.
If you're intimidated by knives,
then you can use a paring knife with a protective glove.
I'd highly recommend that if you want to start getting more skillful and really
start pushing the boundaries of how fast you're working and how efficiently is
getting one of these gloves is a really good idea.
But there are some other tools that I
think are pretty well essential for chopping, slicing, cutting vegetables.
The thing that I use most often is a pair of scissors.
It's really worthwhile getting some good scissors, essentially kitchen scissors,
because there are times when you just want to chop up a small amount of something
and you want to do it in a way that's quite controlled and fine.
There's nothing better than a pair of scissors to quickly do the job,
like green onions or say you want a little bit of celery and some soup that you're
making one cup off, then scissors are just great.
You can just quickly zip through some food like that.
Now, scissors are not expensive,
but you can spend a bit more and get one that's got a built-in cutting board.
I mean, it looks like a really cool idea, but does it work any better than scissors?
Maybe.
Certainly nice clean cut.
There are times when I use this to zip through some things.
But realistically, once your knife skills
are up, this will probably sit in your drawer.
I wouldn't super recommend this one.
If you want to make fine, shredded vegetables,
finer than the Julienne, then you would really enjoy this.
You get these at Asian food stores,
and the way they work, it looks like a peeler, but look what happens.
You go like this and end up with these really nice little strips.
Great for salad, great for stir, fry.
I use this all the time.
This… To do this with a chef knife, we're going to show you how to do it,
but it's a lot more work than what I just did there.
You can zip through a whole carrot in a few seconds.
Of course, you're going to want a peeler.
But in a lot of cases,
when the peel is quite thin, like say, a carrot or a potato, I love these.
They're like pot scrubbers with woven stainless steel, I think is what it is.
I just get this under the water and I give it a good scrub because there's a lot
of nutrition in the peel of a lot of vegetables.
You don't want to necessarily discard that.
You just want to get rid of the ugly stuff and the dirt.
Then if there's any little dead bits or something, you can use your paring knife
and trim those off or trim the end off, that thing.
A peeler, but also having some of those pot scrubbers is a really good idea.
Another thing that if you really want to get good at Asian cooking,
this is one of the things that I found to be really useful.
For instance, you take your onion,
you washed it, trimmed off any dead bits like the ends of the green.
Then what you'll do is you'll take your
onion, you'll lay it down like this, and you just run this thing along like so.
Then when you go through and cut it,
these beautiful little strips that can be put onto like I said,
garnish on the top of a bowl or on the top of a soup, that thing.
It's nice when they're really fine like that.
It doesn't overpower your taste buds with a big burst of onion.
It's just this nice, subtle addition as a garnish.
You can chop those up as fine as you want into short lengths if you wish.
That's quite a useful tool if you want to make a lot of Asian food,
but really to garnish any bowl if you're using green onions or celery.
In terms of grading, there's two things that are pretty essential.
One is just your basic table-top grader like this.
This one has lots of different surfaces.
The most common one would be the coarse one.
You might use that for making a coleslaw-type cabbage.
The other one that's very useful is this
was adopted from carpentry, I think, for finishing carpenters that need fine...
I think it's called a microplane.
In fact, actually, the name on it is called microplane.
Some of them come with handles.
This is the cheaper one.
It just comes with a protective cover, and then it's a very fine grater.
You can use this for especially like
ginger, garlic, when you want to get the zest off of a lemon, that thing.
This is a very useful tool.
One last implement I'm going to talk about is the mandolin.
There's a gazillion different mandolins.
There's like endless infomercials on the best one.
But if you go to chef school, which I did for a little while
at the Culinary Institute of America, I learned that every chef in the world
must acquire one of these to begin chef school.
It is a Japanese mandolin called Benrinner.
I'm not sure that's the exact
pronunciation, but that's how it's spelt Benrinner, Ben Reiner.
It's a Japanese mandolin.
It's sometimes simple and solid is better than fancy.
I have had a lot of mandolins over
the years that end up just sitting in the cupboard doing nothing.
This one I actually use. Very useful.
It comes with three different blades,
depending on how thick that you want the...
This is for making shredded or sliced things.
If you want to say make slices of potatoes and just round even slices,
then you would take the teeth blades out and you would just use the flat blade.
And then it has a protective...
You'd always use this protective
tool with little grippers, but I would never dream of using
a mandolin without using a protective glove.
We're not going to cover sharpening today,
but it is essential that you know how to hone your knife.
It's something you really should do
pretty well with every use or before or after every use.
The reason is that a knife that's properly
sharpened has an edge that if you were to see it
in a microscope, you would see the sharp part is actually very thin.
What that means is that as you're cutting
with normal use on a proper cutting board, doing everything carefully,
eventually what happens is the edge begins to curl, and it's probably like this.
There are spots that are curled this way, spots that are curled this way,
little jaggy bits start to point away from where they
should, and so you don't get the full use of the sharp edge.
That's where the hone comes in or the knife steel.
There's a number of ways to do this.
Chefs, when they're really good at this,
they'll probably be doing it more like this, which I'm a little bit nervous of.
Even though there's a sword, it's got this thing to protect your hand.
It's pretty small.
I don't trust myself,
to be honest with you, going towards me with a sharp knife like this.
The safest way, they always have a little sharp tip here.
If you have a cutting board already out before you put your knife away or before
you use it, what you'll do is you will line this up like that.
Remember, what knife do I have?
Is it a Japanese knife?
Is it a European knife?
If it's a European knife,
then you're going to angle it more like this, 20 degrees,
if it's a Japanese knife, more like that, which is more like 15.
The idea is that you go down like this.
There we go.
You try to get your wrist locked into a position where
it's going to hold that same angle all the way through, and there's a certain feel.
If you're on the edge, you should feel a bit of friction there and that sound.
You can go multiple times one way,
and then you can use the same hand or you can switch hands.
If you're a little bit ambidextrous, it's a little bit easier to do it like this.
But most people are not.
I'm a lefty, so I'm going to go like this.
What we're trying to do is to remove what
they call a bur or that curved-over edge.
If you're careful, you can sometimes feel a bur that's developed on the knife.
This one I hone a lot.
Actually, there is a little bit of bur still there.
You go like this.
The idea is that it does take a little bit
of metal off, but it's mostly just straightening
that sharp, sharp edge, getting it back to pointing the right direction.
It's going to be useful for you.
You just spend a few seconds doing that just about every time,
and you're going to have a knife that will really, really stay sharp.
One last thing I want to mention about
caring for your knives, and that is to protect the edge.
Don't just throw your knives back in a drawer.
Never put a good knife in a dishwasher.
It takes two seconds to clean it
by hand under the sink and dry it off and put it away.
Be respectful of the edge of this blade.
This is a big deal, especially if you have a Japanese knife that's more delicate.
If you're going to put it away
in a drawer, buy some edge guards so that you can put them away like that.
That is essential.
Then one of the things that's a good idea is to get a block to put your knives in.
Or what I really like is to have
the magnetic holder that sits right near your work area so that you can see your
knives and you can select them really easily.
These magnetic ones are great.
Really makes it very convenient.
But it also protects that delicate sharp edge that you're trying to maintain.
Basics – Getting to Know the Tools
Introduction
Knife skills are an essential aspect of cooking, and every aspiring chef should have a solid foundation in this area. Being proficient in using a knife can make meal preparation faster, more efficient, and safer. Good knife skills involve proper hand placement, the ability to handle a sharp blade, and an understanding of the different cuts of vegetables, fruits, and meats.
One of the most important aspects of mastering knife skills is maintaining a sharp knife. A dull knife requires more force to cut through food, which can increase the likelihood of accidents. A sharp knife, on the other hand, allows for cleaner and more precise cuts, reducing the risk of injury. It is important to know how to sharpen and hone a knife regularly, as this will help to maintain its edge and prolong its lifespan.
Another critical aspect of good knife skills is proper hand placement. The hand that is holding the food should be tucked in a claw-like shape, with the fingertips tucked in and the thumb behind the fingers, providing stability and control. The other hand should be firmly holding the handle of the knife and using a rocking motion to make the cuts.
An understanding of the various cuts of vegetables, fruits, and meats is also essential. Different ingredients require different cuts, such as dicing, julienning, and mincing. Understanding the purpose and technique for each cut can help to improve the efficiency of food preparation and presentation.
In conclusion, developing foundational knife skills is a crucial step towards becoming a successful chef. With proper hand placement, knowledge of cuts, and maintenance of sharp knives, chefs can improve their speed, precision, and safety in the kitchen.
Resources
Foundational Skills Tips and Tricks
Week 1 Recipes
Completing the quiz below is required in order to advance to the next lesson in this module.
Please note that understanding the core concepts contained in this lesson will help ensure your success going forward. By way of review, these concepts are:
- Different types of knives, including chef knives, European knives, and Japanese knives, are discussed, highlighting the importance of knife sharpness and maintenance.
- Various kitchen tools like bench scrapers, scissors, mandolins, and graters are recommended for efficient food preparation, especially in Asian cooking.
- Techniques for honing knives are demonstrated, emphasizing the significance of maintaining a sharp edge for precise cutting.
- The importance of caring for knives properly, including handwashing, and using edge guards or magnetic holders to protect the blades, is emphasized for longevity and safety.
Cooking Foundations
September 9, 2023
Necessary stuff this!
Never knew!
September 9, 2023
Never knew how important the basics were! Thanks Dr. Lyon : )
