Culinary Classroom Lesson 3: Knife Skills

welcome back to culinary classroom I'm chef Terry Leonard we're here at Johnson Wales University and we're in the culinary French lab today we're talking about knife skills knife skills are tremendously important to classical French cuisine it's all about the shape and the size and the precision of the knife skills very very important so we're going to work with that today I have several shapes here that we're going to work with and these are great handy little things that show you like a 3d representation of what the size is you know sometimes recipes say large dice or medium dice or small dices like what's the difference between those sizes there's a real difference if you're looking at actual classic cuisine so these are available in various places you can always find great pictures in different cookbooks about those sizes so we're going to start with our cutting board first we have a good sturdy cutting board I like to have lots of cutting boards so when I use it I can get rid of it put in the dishwasher and grab another one and I always keep it on a nice wet cloth that keeps it from rolling around so now I'm ready to look at my knives this is a French knife also called a chef's knife this has a blade that's much deeper than the handle is because your fingers are going to go up underneath here and that allows you a good cutting surface here now what we're going to be able to do is cut this julienne now this is a julienne you saw this on the board exact long skinny pieces the way we achieve that I've got a piece of celery here is I cut off the end pieces that I don't want to use and I'm going to put them in my trash Bowl you always keep a trash bowl handy I'm going to get it to the length that I want from my julienne in order to make my julienne cut I need to use the claw method so let me show you what that looks like first my fingers are like a claw down on the board and my thumb is back behind the balance or pivot point that I'm going to be using is going to be the front of this knuckle if you see that this is how I'm going to be able to bring my knife back keep these fingers out of the way this is called the claw so let me bring this in and I am going to make some nice thin slices which is also called julienne and I would cut these one more time because these are not a regular shape and again I'm using my claw method to keep control over my product and keeping my finger tips out of the way all right so that's julienne we're gonna use another method and we're going to use the potato for this one this is the tunnel method I'm going to put my fingers on either side of the product and I'm going to bring the knife in so that I don't lose this round product right here okay so I can make my first cut on my round product now he can go on his flat side right here and I'm ready to go in here again I'm going to cut this down till I get a size that I want to work with again putting it down in the flat side now I can use my claw method because I've got this piece small enough and under control that I can use my claw and what I'm going to do is take a couple of cuts here because I'm going to work toward at the brunoise which is this real tiny dice that we have right here so we've got to make several cuts in order to get to the brunoise now I want to get nice clean edges so I'm going to get rid of some of the items that I don't need again I'm just using my claw method here I'm not going to have any of this skin I've got beautiful pieces right here that I'm going to be able to cut into my brunoise depending on how big you want I'm going to make a couple of slices down here now I've got these long matchsticks this is very similar to a Julie M it's a little bit fatter they're very square okay so I want to get these all stacked up and I use my knife is kind of a clean edge to push them all up against so I get a nice cut I'm using my claw method again and hold this down and I'm going to look and I want to measure so that I just get that a little bit of a quarter of an inch also notice that my knife pushes down on the cutting board up here in the front I don't bring the whole knife down I'm only using the very front tip as a pivot point I'm going to watch your fingers and keep them out of the way and look what I've got look at this little tiny brunoise alright so I'm ready to slice the tomato everybody slices tomatoes so I'm going to show you how to get it done where it's nice and easy and straight here's my tomato and I'm going to take this first slice right off the top now look I immediately put my hand right into the claw because I know that I'm going to have to keep good control over this round product so that I don't cut myself so I've got my claw goin and the first slice is going to be right against my knuckle and I'm going to push down there you go and get that first slice off it's not a particularly ripe tomato but this is about cutting techniques alright so the next one I'm going to do the same way and I'm going to keep pushing with my thumb you'll see me kind of pushing with my thumb you'll see me coming back on and that's going to keep that counter pressure going on that tomato so coming down with my point and back feeling it with my knuckle and back and I'm using my if you can see my index finger I'm just knocking it off because if you don't they end up falling all over the place and you don't want that alright keep using my my knuckle as a guide and I keep pulling back with my thumb you do that and you're just going to have actually beautiful slices every time a little bit of knife skill there okay so we're going to get into a diced onion I've seen so many onions hacked it's not even funny there really is an easy way to do it it's not just classically French it's also just really easy in a quick way to get a lot of diced onions I keep diced onions in my fridge all the time alright so first we pick up our French knife we want to make sure that we're holding it properly it's a couple different ways you can have your fingers just all underneath here your thumb is on the other side you don't want any fingers on here this would be incorrect you see that a lot get that finger down or you can have your hands a little bit further up on the blade that's how I like to hold my knife I just feel like I have a little more control that way we're all personal about our knives alright so I'm holding my knife I'm going to cut just the tip of the root off of my onion and the tip of the growing top part and these are going to be discarded so I've taken both ends off but I've made sure that I left it quite a bit on the root end I want it to hold together while I'm making turning this into a dice let me get this peeled off here again working right over my trash pull notice I didn't have to go find a trash can I'm right here on my root end I'm going to have that away from me and I'm going to Center my knife up and I'm going to use my tunnel method to get one long cut through here okay I notice I cut right through my root end that's what I want to do that's going to hold these two pieces together I now have two halves that I can work with now this half I'm going to work with my root in being the end that's going to hold everything together and I'm going to cut from this side so it holds it all together you want to follow the shape of the onion so I'm going to follow the shape of my onion and I'm going to see the shape of my knife matches the shape or the plane of my onion and I'm going to slice all the way in but not too where I'm going to actually cut through the root I don't want to cut through the root and I'm going to make these cuts just about a half inch apart and again I'm keeping my fingers out of the way here but it's still all holding together okay but I've got a lot of striations a lot of cuts through here now I'm going to come with my knife even or flat like my cutting board here and I'm going to press down and I'm going to bring this in almost all the way to the root one more time almost all the way to the root all right see how this is totally staying together but it's going to fall apart in a million pieces in just a second ready looks like magic glob method here we go I always use that that's a properly diced on yeah I'm ready to show you shipping on and so I'm taking this beautiful basil this is pretty common you can do it with any kind of herb that you're working with lettuces that you're working with Bibb lettuce spinach anything that's leafy like this and get a beautiful long skinny what's called a Schiff and odd alright I just stack them up one on top of the other I'm going to roll them like a little cigar not that I know anything about rolling cigars alright now I'm going to take my chef's knife and I'm really I'm just going to pivot right on the end of it watch what I do with my knife I'm just going to bring it down like that okay nice and skinny as I get closer to my fingers I go into my claw method and you see what I come up with are teeth beautiful narrow skinny pieces that are gorgeous for garnish and you see them finishing dishes as part of salads just absolutely beautiful this is Shifa nod so the next knife that I'm going to use is going to be my paring knife holding my fingers on the handle and then bringing the blade to my thumb this is how you use a paring knife I'm actually going to pair off the the peel we're going to work with an apple and I'm going to show you how I'm going to peel this Apple using my paring knife dig in get a bit of skin and then you see where my thumb is my thumb is pulling the knife toward my thumb but I have complete control over this is not like I'm going to cut my thumb off a lot of people are uncomfortable with this you get a practice and I'm just going to bring this down to the bottom so we just finished up with our knife skills we learned how to use our French knife and also our paring knife we have a rough chop over here of mirepoix we created a julienne of the celery also brunoise of carrots we used a couple different methods over here with our knife we use the tunnel method to keep hold of anything around and we also use the claw method for slicing and then we finished off with a little Schiff and odd over here so you're ready you've got a few basic knife skills under your belt for next episode we're going to need it because we're doing some cooking some real cooking so for homework go out and get a couple of these things try some of these different cuts see if you can get comfortable with them and thanks for joining us I'm chef Kerry Leonard on culinary classroom you can buy your next gas grill from a big-box store but you're not going to get much grill so why not buy your next natural gas grill from PS NC energy we'll help you choose a premium grill that fits you and will even deliver and set it up so when you're ready for a big boy grill don't go to the box by your next gas grill from PS NC energy your natural gas professionals

Channel: Dave Hegnauer

Views: 724,761

Rating: 4.5761361 out of 5

Keywords: chef, carrie leonard

Id: bZbpEqv7DfU

Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2011