(upbeat music) - What's up, commis? Chef Billy Parisi here, and today I'm gonna show you
those perfect knife skills that all people who love to
cook should know how to do. I posed out the question, "What would you like to see
me do in some of these videos "that are for you, for the subscribers?" And an overwhelming majority
of y'all said, "Knife skills." There are a few other ones
in there that we'll get to in some other videos, but for now we're gonna
focus in on knife skills. And yes, I do not have a hat on today. I actively try to cover up the gray hair, which is coming in way
too fast these days, so no hat, I got hair, it's getting gray, that's all it is to it. Let's get into, first of all, using the right knife to do this. As you can probably guess,
I've got a ton of knives. I come in everyday, I
unroll my knife roll, and I pull out the knives that I think I'm gonna use that day. And of course, the number one
knife that I always pull out is my chef's knife, or French knife. This is in between eight and 12 inches, gotta nice handle, it's
pretty thick in the blade, and this is your absolute kitchen tool. This is the thing you
bring to any cooking event. It's the first knife you pull
out of your drawer to use. It's the most commonly
used knife out there, and especially in professional kitchens. There are, obviously, a
bunch of different brands, a couple different styles out there. This is a Shun knife. It is a Japanese blade. The only issue, I would say, with these, is they're so sharp they're brittle, so you can't like hack through bones if you're trying to carve up a chicken or anything like that,
because it could chip. So any good chef's knife will
probably run you $100 or more. You take care of it by
scrubbing it with soap and water in your hands, not putting
it in the dishwasher, keeping it sharp, whether
it's running it on a steel, or sharpening it on a stone. This is the knife you use,
and if you've seen my knife, which has kind of a funky handle, and it's made of carbon
steel, it's incredibly sharp, that's the one, obviously,
we are gonna use for today. And yes, you may be laughing right now, because I do have a knife roll and knife sheaths that say Dexter. I don't think it's
affiliated with that show, and no, I'm not a crazy psycho
killer vigilante person. I think it's just coincidence. Or maybe they sold it, and I just like, I don't know, anyways. What we wanna do is get
into some knife cuts, and a really cool little tool here, which sort of just shows all
the different measurements, whether that's the size,
the width, the length, this is a cool tool if
you're really serious about knife cuts. We carry this thing around
everyday in culinary school. We were tested on knife cuts everyday, so it's something that I pride myself on, is having nice knife cuts, and hopefully, over time, after tons and
tons of practice yourselves, you'll get it, too. So to perfectly hold that
knife, what you do wanna do is grab it and pinch it by the blade using your thumb and your pointer finger. So that means the top of the blade will be pushing into
right here on your hand, and over time you will
develop a callous here, because you will be pushing
and rocking that knife onto hard or difficult items. It builds up over time,
it's totally normal, don't freak out, you're
gonna have a callous. Sorry. So once you sort of pinch it,
now let's practice cutting. The most important piece, outside
of even holding the knife, is what you're gonna
do with that other hand that's holding that food. You always want to tuck
in your fingertips, and then simply practice
rocking that knife back and forth. You can do this on a carrot,
on any other vegetable, celery, does not matter. Let that cold steel of the
blade run on the knuckles of your hand that's holding the food item. Just rock it, just practice rocking. Maybe you're gonna do 10 or 15 carrots just to get comfortable doing this. This is how you slice. And now that you've had a
ton of practice slicing, let's get into the first
one called brunoise, which is a small 1/8 of an inch cube. A smaller one, which is
a 1/16 of an inch cube, known as fine brunoise, or
us, in the culinary world, used to call it a brunoisette, but you're never gonna use that. You may use a brunoise. It's a lot of times used for garnishes, and like consommes,
soups and other things, or just, in general, just a garnish you wanna
sprinkle some stuff over. Anyways, let's get into it. I'm going to be using a carrot. You can use a potato
or something like that. We're gonna sort of trim
off the sides of the carrot on every single side, so that it sort of lays flat and doesn't rock when
we're trying to slice it. That's how accidents happen. Once you get to that point,
go ahead and slice in of what you think is an 1/8 of an inch. You can use your trusty tool if you're not sure what an
1/8 of an inch looks like, and then once you slice all the way down, simply stack up a few of those layers, do the same thing, an 1/8 of an inch over, and then turn it, and using
that rocking slicing motion, get you another 1/8 of inch, until you get a perfect
1/8 of an inch cube, which is known as the brunoise. And a super funny story, when
I was in culinary school, especially the first part, called basics, we all had partners. Everyone had to sort of
partner up with another person, and mine was a guy named David. And I'm like six two,
six three with clogs on, like six four or six five,
I'm a pretty tall dude. My partner was like, four
ten, four eleven, max. He was a pretty short guy. And we had knife skill cut
tests every single day, and man, he was not too
great at knife cuts, so I would sort of cut it up little bit and scrape it onto his cutting board, making sure no one saw me, so he could take it up to the
chef and hopefully pass it, but always kinda did that
to help him out, man. What are you gonna do? I don't know. So now that we've got this brunoise, let's move onto a small dice, because this is something we
are gonna use all the time. Just like with a carrot or potato, cut off the ends to make
sure it will lay flat again. You need to do this,
or else it's gonna move and rock around, and you might get cut, and I don't wanna be the
one responsible for that. So once you get it to that point, slice in about a 1/4 of an inch. Turn it, stack it up, do
another 1/4 of an inch, and then turn it again, and then do that rocking motion till you get a nice 1/4 inch cube. These are beautiful. This is perfect, exactly
what we're looking for. Onto the next one, my friends. We are next gonna do a medium dice, which is probably the
first or second most dice that I use in all of my cooking. In the exact same way
of cutting off the ends, instead this time what we're gonna do is go in a 1/2 inch. So once you are to that
consistency, again, layer it up, do another 1/2
inch, turn it, 1/2 inch. Beautiful medium diced cubes. Practice it, know it, love it, use it. Now onto a large dice,
which is oftentimes used in soups, very hearty, very chunky. I actually don't use
large dices too often, but we're gonna upgrade to a potato, because the carrots aren't
wide enough to do this. So same thing with the potato that you did with the carrot, knock off the ends to make
sure that it sits flat on your cutting board, so that it does not rock back and forth. Once you're there, we are going to measure 3/4 of an inch wide. You can use your tool. Place it over to best gauge
where you think that is, and then simply slice it, fold it over, give another slice at
the 3/4 inch, turn it, then get beautiful 3/4 cubes. And I do have to say that
your first time doing this, it's not going to be perfect. This stuff takes practice. I mean, they say in the culinary world once you've done it 1000
times, you've mastered it, so you've got a lot of
practice to do, my friends, before you start mastering and perfecting a lot of these knife
cuts, but you will get it. Start somewhere, start practicing it, start, you know, practice
holding that knife, rocking it back and forth. You're going to get it. Okay, a few more knife cuts. And now onto the batonnet. What we wanna do is make sure it is a 1/4 of an inch by a 1/4 of an inch by two inches in length, so I'm gonna sort of cut off
the ends of the potato here. You can use a carrot again. And then just in that same manner, do a 1/4 of an inch down,
turn it, 1/4 of an inch down. Boom, you've got your batonnets. These are great little garnishes, or just fun ways to cut
up vegetables to use. These probably aren't used
too often, it's pretty thick. Maybe in a salad or on the
side, serving of vegetables. Let's move on to one of
the more popular ones, which is julienne, which
is an 1/8 of an inch by 1/8 of an inch by two inches,
in the exact same manner. I'm gonna use a carrot this time. Obviously, once the
ends are flattened out, slice it in an 1/8 of an
inch, turn it, 1/8 of inch. Boom, you've got beautiful
sort of matchstick carrots. If you're way too lazy to do this, you can get them from the grocery store, but I will judge you. Don't do it, do it yourself. Get the practice, learn
how to do it, my friends. Okay, so now that you've got
your basic knife cut skills, I'm gonna give you a bonus of three more, starting with the rough chop. Here's what a rough chop is. It's whatever you need it to be. This is what goes into stocks or, if you're gonna puree up something, it doesn't quite matter what the size or shape of it is. So, for a potato, I
just simply slice across as best I can, turn it, slice it again. I mean, it is not gonna be pretty, it's not meant to be pretty. Turn it, slice it again. I got some odd shaped cubes here. That, my friends, is basically
what a rough chop is. Let's move onto the next
one, which is a fine mince, which I do say often. This can be used for garlic or garnish, like, this is what parsley
is usually used for, the knife cut that it takes
to get there, a fine mince. So just folding up the parsley, just rock that knife back and forth, tucking in those fingers,
and then once you're here, really just mince away, rocking that knife back and forth from one side to the other, and then from back to front. It's gonna be a beautiful,
beautiful little garnish. You can see how finely minced
in size they are, boom. And then the last one, chiffonade. This is really only applied to basil, so pick some basil leaves off. Next you want to stack them up. Next simply roll it up, and then julienne. That same motion of rocking the knife, and you have nice long strips of basil. This is really the only herb
that you'll ever do this on. But now that you have
these knife cut skills, you need to practice them, and you need to practice
putting them in recipes, so you're not just throwing
away vegetables all day while trying to get the perfect knife cut. The first one, check out
my Chicken Detox Soup. Lots of nice fine mince, and medium and small dice
cuts of vegetables in there, and then the other one
is the Arroz con Pollo. I do a lot of small dicing in there. Once you get it hooked up, you are gonna be in great shape
with knife cuts, my friends. I'll see you guys on the next video.
