Knife Skills

Kitchen Knives Overview (Types & Cuts)

Honing a Knife

In a kitchen there is nothing more dangerous than a dull knife. Dull knives require more force exerted per cut, which can make them more challenging to handle. Working with a dull knife requires more physical effort which can cause repetitive strain injuries. Maintaining the sharpness of your knife's blade will help it maximize its lifetime on the counter.

The most overlooked part this task is the difference between sharpening and honing. Sharpening is an advanced skill that introduces a new blade by breaking off small pieces of blunt metal with hard abrasive. This is sometimes with sand paper or a grinding stone. Finer and finer abrasives are used until the blade is straightened and polished. This requires much practice, precision, and its own set of tools.

Honing is the process of using a a fine abrsaive to improve the geometry of the blade. It does not introduce a new shape but will take the edge and make it better. A honing steel, pictured right, is actually neither sharpening nor honing the knife. It is instead straightening the blade to re-align it to the center. This will improve the cut and should be done regularly to maintain the blade.

Use of a honing steel should only be done in a busy kitchen when the user is practiced and understands the safety concerns. A YouTube video to the right will help demonstrate the proper technique.

Information from wikipedia articles: honing (metalworking) and knife sharpening

How to Hold a Knife

Your dominant hand holding the knife will do most of the work but it will get help from your other hand in guiding and stabilizing whatever is being cut.

If you have a heavy and sharp knife you can position the palm of your hand up the handle near the blade so that your thumb and index finger can grip the spine. This will allow for easiest cutting as the blade falls down on its target.

Your non-dominant hand will be following the cut with its fingertips curled down protected from harm and knuckles pressing on the ingredient to hold it in place. While you are working your way across the ingredient you can move your helping hand backwards in regular increments while stabilizing the blade. This will result in even cuts that will help keep your cooking time consistent throughout the dish. Move the knife in a rocking motion from front to back as well as up and down.

Dicing an Onion

It's not too hard to learn how to finely dice an onion. To do so without crying, however, is a skill better learned sooner than later.

First, peel the skin off to reveal the soft white flesh underneath. Leave the root intact and cut the onion in half parallel to the grain. Mr. Gordon Ramsay recommends using three fingers on our free hand to guide the knife, chopping parallel to the grain in long strokes.

Rotate the knife 90 degrees but keep parellel to the grain and slice into the onion in three places.

Next, dice perpendicular to the grain to get fine pieces. Cut around the root to limit waste.

taken from Gordon Ramsay's YouTube channel - pictured right

How to Cut Garlic

Every food tastes better with a hint of garlic. Garlic can be prepared in a number of ways so our knife handling must adapt depending on what the recipe calls for.

The first thing you need to do is separate the cloves. You will notice that a head of garlic is made up of a number of cloves. Break the cloves off with your fingers or use the heel of your hand to press down from the root.

Next you will want to peel the cloves. To remove the skin you can take your chef's knife and place the blade closest to the spine on the clove. Press down with the heel of your hand to crush the garlic. Press at a 90 degree angle and keep your fingers away from the blade as a safety measure. You should now be able to easily remove the skin with your fingers by pulling it away from the insides.

Chopping is done with your blade held in a classic pinch grip as we wrote above. Hold the knife at an angle 90 degrees to the cutting board and use a rocking motion rotating the blade as necessary to chop the garlic. You can continue chopping by using the spine and your non-dominant hand to scoop the chopped pieces a pile and repeat until you achieve the target size.

Mincing is very similar to the chopping process only you continue on until the garlic is very fine. This will increase the amount of aroma released and increase the flavour your garlic brings to the dish. A garlic press could also work here, but you may lose more of the vegetable to the insides of the machine - better not let it go to waste, and besides, who wouldn't want more practice on their awesome chef's knife?

Slicing can also be done with a chef's knife but you may want to opt for a thinner santoku knife to get this job done. Hold the garlic down with your fingertips curled under your knuckles and make a thing slice across the clove crosswise. An alternative method if you're using a chef's knife is to hold the knife with the point resting on your cutting board and slowly push the garlic with your free hand into the path of the chopping blade. Go slowly until you have practice with this because it is more dangerous than your traditional chopping.

Make a paste by using your palm on the side of your blade to crush the garlic flat. Add some sea salt and then flex your blade with the point touching the board and squash the garlic back and forth regrouping it as necessary until it is a puree.