Video Transcript
Hey guys, thanks for tuning in this week for the Q & A video Blog Series. This is the first question of this series. We’re going to do this once a week. This weeks question came from Steve in Connecticut. His question was “How important are knife skills to the amateur cook and or chef, and what can he do to improve these skills?”
There’s a few different things you can do. Number one there are a immense amount of books out there, that talk all about knife skills and how to enhance them and the different cuts that are available to make with various knives and so on. I will recommend my favorite book for that at the end of this video.
In addition to that, one of the best ways to improve your knife skills is going to be to just practice. I mean just like when you learned to ride a bike, you fell down scraped you knees, what’d you do? You got up and did it again till you finally figured it out. Same type of deal with knife skills!
Again knife skills are the foundation of anything in the kitchen. Without good knife skills in the kitchen the rest of your skills in the kitchen are going to be somewhat lack. So it’s really important that you work on those knife skills, whether you’re an amateur cook, whether you a professional cook or chef it doesn’t even matter. You have to have good knife skills in a kitchen in order to make the best quality meal that you can possibly make.
Knife skills involve a number of things from knife safety to knowing the cuts to knowing the different types of dices, to knowing the other various types of cuts and garnishing cuts and so on.
Now obviously due to time constraints, I don’t have time in this short video to give you a full lesson in knife skills. But there are a number of knives out there and a number of books out there that show you how to use those knives and what they are specifically designed for.
Now, my favorite book that I’ve read in terms of knife skills came from Charlie Trotter, he was one of the co-authors on it. It’s called “Knife Skills; In The Kitchen”. You can find that book on amazon.com for $10.84 is what I looked it up for yesterday. Great price on the book, I paid dramatically more for it than that when it first came out but, hey you know you guys are going to get a steal on it. I highly recommend that book, because that book goes into immense depth with what knife skills are. It tells you what to look for in a knife. It tells you how to properly handle a knife, what knifes do what and what their designed for.
Again these things will help you improve your food because you’re going to know what cuts you should use. You’re going to know how to make everything uniform and even, which is going to allow for even cooking. Even cooking will make or break a meal. I mean if you have a potato that is diced up but you have a chunk that is this big (Example A) and then you have a chunk that is this big (Example B) which chunk do you think is going to cook faster? Probably this one over here right (Example B)! Well, with that being said the smaller one is going to turn to mush while the bigger one is going to take longer to cook and by the time it is done the other one (Example A) is just going to be kinda like a pasty mush. So you definitely want to work on your knife skills.
Again knife skills are dramatically important, I can’t stress it enough. They are the foundation in a kitchen.
On a closing note for this video I just wanted to tell you thanks again for all your and please keep the questions coming. We will answer as many questions as you have, again within 48 hours. All you have to do is submit an email to questions@classycateringcreations.com and within 48 hours you will get your email response that will answer your question. Your question will also be in the running for being answered on the video blog posts for the following weeks, whichever week it is that you submit it.
One thing I did want to make a quick announcement for we are also producing T-shirts which you can find on the services/charities page for the Special Olympics for the Penguin Plunge. We are promoting those T-shirts all of the proceeds are going to the Special Olympics. If you guys would help us out, our team goal was $1,000 dollars. I think we’re going to go on ahead and surpass that goal as it looks as of right now.
Get yourself a T-shirt, support the Special Olympics and help us out. Again that’s at classycateringcreations.com/services/charities you’ll be able to find that right there at the top of the page.
Thanks again for all of your support and we look forward to hearing your questions this week, and we will talk to you soon.
