The 5 Knives You Need In Your Kitchen (And How To Use Them) | Epicurious 101

I'm Frank Proto professional chef and culinary instructor and today I'm going to talk about the knives you need to have in your kitchen I'm going to show you how to use a paring knife a chef's knife a serrated knife a boning knife a peeler and a honing Steel this is kitchen knives 101. [Music] the paring knife is a great utility knife for any small test you're going to do in the kitchen generally a paring knife is four inches long it has a non-serrated edge and a little bit of a slope and it's super ideal for doing things with your hands you're not ever really going to chop on a cutting board with this you're using it wrong if you are but if you're peeling shaping deveining that's what this knife is for in front of me I have an apple and generally I'm going to use a paring knife to peel this Apple so let's give it a shot you can see that I'm holding the knife in one place and turning the Apple into it I'm going to try and get one long peel all right I think I did good I can trim off the top trim off the bottom I'm just going to cut into quarters and here's another really great thing that a paring knife is good for getting out the cores of your Apple make nice easy movements with this it's a super versatile knife in the kitchen it doesn't need to be super expensive this one costs about eight dollars it stays sharper a long time feels is good in your hand and it gets a lot of work done don't be fooled by the size of this knife when used correctly it is a kitchen Powerhouse the next knife you're going to need in your kitchen is a chef's knife a chef's knife is generally eight to ten inches long it has a blade curving upwards along its length ending in a narrow point now traditional chef knife doesn't look like this this is more of a santoku or a Japanese chef knife usually traditional Chef's Knives have a longer and thinner blade at the front but this is my personal knife and this is the one I use all the time a chef knife is used in the kitchen for a wide range of items you can chop you can butcher but I like to use it to slice Tomatoes The Knife does all the work if you're pushing down on this your knife is not sharp enough you should be able to lightly saw away and get a beautiful slice of tomato that is a super sharp chef knife no kitchen is complete without a serrated knife a serrated knife is like a mini saw it has these teeth on it and it's really good for cutting things that are crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle like this baguette the teeth on the blade break through the crust of the bread and we give beautiful slices no one likes squishy bread all you gotta do is a nice easy song motion and this knife does the job it's basically a mini chainsaw the slice is perfect for a bruschetta pancontomate pretty much anything you want to throw on it now this knife might not be a common knife in your kitchen but it isn't mine and it's called a boning knife it's got a thin blade and a pointy tip it's super sharp and super precise the Bony knife helps you separate meat from Bones with very little waste and I'm going to show you how to do it with this chicken thigh I'll take off the skin push the back of the knife against the bone and follow the bone we go along the other side the front of the knife rests on the bone and we pull it towards us I pinch it between my thumb and pointer I stick my knife through and then free that bone up scrape a little that meat back and I'm going to cut out the bone and the cartilage and use that for stock that is a beautiful boned out chicken thigh now my next knife is not technically a knife although it does have some blades on it and it is essential for every kitchen a peeler makes it super easy to remove the skin from fruits and vegetables it's fast efficient and sharp not only that it's super inexpensive this probably costs four to five dollars normally I teach people to cut away from themselves and the peeler is pretty much the only exception to this rule it is a blade and you are kind of cutting towards yourself so you have to pay extra attention when you're using a peeler and I'm going to show you how to do that with this potato I have a top and a bottom and they're interchangeable so I like to take the top off if there's any sort of eyes in there that's what this little hooky loopy thing is for you get in there and you pop those eyes out so do the top of the potato do the bottom of the potato and then all we have to do here is connect the top and bottom in nice smooth Strokes a potato should not take you a long time to peel it should take you minutes maybe even less than a minute if you're good and that is how you peel a potato the last essential tool for your kitchen is not a knife at all it is called a honing steel a honing steel does not sharpen your knives what a honing steel does is if we look at this blade under the microscope we're going to have lots of fine micro serrations like this as you use a knife they get bent and twisted if you run it over the honing steel it brings them back to the original form and keeps your knife sharper longer if your knife is dull and you look at it under a microscope it's going to look like this round it over you can run it over the steel all day and all night and you're not going to get a sharp blade from this point you're going to need a stone or you're going to need someone to sharpen it for you grab the steel in your non-dominant hand it has a little guard here so you don't cut yourself so basically you're going to run it over the steel at about a 20 degree angle you're going to need your protractor kids you want to put just enough pressure that the knife is pushing against the steel down on each side and that'll give us a nice tuned up Edge if you're not comfortable like that you could do it away from you and if you're not comfortable like that you can put it on the table and do it here like this so you have three different options on how you can use the honing steel whenever I set my culinary station up my steel would always be here and every five to ten minutes I take it run my knife over the steel and put it back so let's see how this knife does with this lemon there's not a lot of resistance cuts through the lemon pretty good but let's run it over the steel and see what happens look at that how it grabs nice and easy I'm barely putting any pressure on it cut nice straight through you notice how I'm using a sawing motion when you're cutting delicate fruits and vegetables that sawing motion is your friend a pony sale might not be a common piece of equipment but it is an essential tool in my kitchen these are the tools that I use most often and they will help you become a better cook

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 221,576

Keywords: best serrated knife, boning knife, epicurious, epicurious 101, epicurious 101 knives, frank proto, fruit peeler, honing steel, how to use a honing steel, how to use boning knife, how to use kitchen knife, how to use paring knife, how to use vegetable peeler, kitchen knife, kitchen knives, kitchen peeler, paring knife, protocooks, serrated knife, serrated knives, use a serrated knife, vegetable peeler, when to use a serrated knife

Id: QgVyN6Lpiuc

Length: 6min 54sec (414 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2023