4Knife work

Of all the skills a cook learns, knife work is the one the rest are built on. Fast, accurate cutting does not arrive on the first day. It comes from a tidy station, a sharp blade and the same careful movements done again and again.

Cuts also have names, and each name means a shape and a size. A recipe that asks for diced or minced food is asking for something exact. Learning those names, and the tools that go with them, lets you read a recipe and know what to put on the board.

4.1 Choosing your knives

A cook does not need a drawer full of knives. Three knives cover almost every cutting job in a home kitchen, so a boxed set is not worth buying.

The knives a cook needs

The chef's knife is the one used most. At a pinch it can do all of the daily cutting on its own: dicing onions, cutting potatoes, cutting meat into smaller pieces, cutting greens. Its bigger blade makes the work faster and easier than a smaller knife does.

Chef's knives come in two main shapes:

• A western-style chef's knife has a strong curve toward the tip, so the blade can rock on the board for fast chopping.
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• A santoku is a Japanese-style chef's knife, with a flatter edge and a wide blade. Some santokus have small hollows, or divots, along the side, meant to help food come off the blade; whether they really do is open to doubt.
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The paring knife is the small knife, and the second most used. It is for close, careful work, such as breaking down a chicken or cutting small fruits and vegetables. A bird's beak paring knife has a blade that curves down to a sharp point, for peeling and for digging out the core of a fruit or vegetable.

A serrated knife has an edge cut into small teeth. On an offset serrated knife, the angle of the handle lets it sit in the hand the way a chef's knife does. The teeth cut through a tough skin without crushing the soft inside.

A serrated knife suits several jobs:

• bread
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• tomatoes, pineapple and eggplant
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• cutting a sandwich in half
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• slicing cake layers apart
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Other knives are useful for some cooks and some jobs.

None of these extra knives is essential:

• A boning knife is a nice extra, about $25, that does a few jobs very well.
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• A utility knife does not get much use, though some cooks find it fits the hand well.
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• A slicing knife is worth buying only for a lot of roasting or sushi making.
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Try a knife before you buy it

A knife a personal thing. It does not have to cost a lot. It does not have to be the knife you saw a famous chef use.

He suggests working in steps:

• Decide how much you can afford to spend.
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• Find out about the knives at that price.
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• If you can, go to a knife shop or a good kitchen store and hold the knife.
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• Check that it feels comfortable and right for you. A knife that sits well in one cook's hand may not sit well in yours.
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Two kinds of store are good places to try knives: a shop that specializes in knives, and a kitchen store with a large knife counter. Kitchen stores of that kind are found in many places, with a good selection to hold and compare.

If there is no store near you, buying online works too. Choose a seller that takes returns. Then, if a knife does not feel right in your hand, send it back.

A good knife review also helps a lot. If you know you like lighter knives, a review tells you how heavy a knife is. Japanese-style knives tend to be lighter than German-style or French-style ones.

How to choose a knife

With the knife in your hand, feel for two things: it should feel good in the hand, and it should be balanced, with the same weight in front of the grip as behind it. A chef's knife also needs a blade long and wide enough to scoop food off the board. The handle material matters little.

Length is the next choice. A 10-inch chef's knife gives more control; a true beginner with no knife skills may do better with an 8-inch one. Paring knives are usually about 3 inches long, though a 4-inch one comes close to a utility knife, which is usually 5 or 6 inches.

The metal matters for sharpening. A blade of low carbon steel, often darkened with use, sharpens very easily. A blade of harder high carbon steel takes more work to sharpen. Sharpening and honing are covered in a later topic.

Cheap or expensive?

There are two sound views on what to spend.

A good tool does not have to cost a lot. Three good knives can cost about $75 together. A chef's knife of about $40 can do nearly as well as a Japanese one costing about $300, which may be only about 10% better, and the cheaper knife is easier to bring back to sharp; a Japanese knife takes more skill to sharpen well. A serrated knife is hard to sharpen at all, so buy one for about $30 and use it until it is dull, which for a home cook takes many years. The brands found in professional restaurant kitchens are much alike.

Good knives also repay their cost over time: bought well, they last a lifetime, even though the cost seems big at the start. Even then, a cheap paring knife is the one to keep for rough jobs, never an expensive one.

Either way, buy single knives, not a set, and choose each one for the cooking you actually do.

4.2 Holding and cutting with a knife

Knife skills come first among everything a cook learns: "Knife skills are the single most important and the most fundamental skill a chef must acquire." Speed and output grow only with practice. Three things support that practice: a well-organized workstation, knives kept sharp, and a disciplined way of working.

The chef's knife

The knife you will hold most often is the chef's knife, also called the French knife. You will spend more time with it than with any other tool.

The knife hand

A firm grip gives you control. With control, your cuts are more accurate and faster, the knife is less likely to slip, and accidents become less likely.

To hold a chef's knife well, do not grab only the handle. Pinch the blade where it meets the handle (the heel) between your thumb and your first finger. Then close your other three fingers around the handle.

The guide hand

Your other hand has a job too. It holds the food steady and moves it toward the blade.

• Curl your fingertips under, so the hand makes a claw. Never cut with the fingers lying flat on the food.
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• Let the flat side of the blade rest against the second joint of your curled fingers. That joint guides the knife.
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• Using that joint as a guide helps you control how thick each piece is.
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Let the edge do the work

Do not push straight down on the food. Draw the blade across it in a sliding stroke. When the edge is sharp, it passes through the food with very little force.

4.3 Caring for and sharpening a knife

A good knife can last for many years, even a lifetime, if it is looked after. A whetstone is better than a manual or electric sharpener, because a stone gives the cook more control. Machines often grind away too much metal, so the blade wears down far faster than it should.

Soft steel and hard steel

• Western-style knives (the usual European kind) are mostly made of softer steel. They are easier to sharpen and can be kept going with a honing rod, but they go dull a little sooner.
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• Japanese-style knives use harder steel. They take a finer edge and keep it longer, but they are harder to sharpen well.
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A hard, high-carbon knife needs more care. Never put it in the dishwasher, and never run it through an electric sharpener, which tears off extra metal.

Stones and grits

A water stone must be soaked in water before use; the water lubricates it.

• 300 is for a knife in very bad shape that needs a whole new edge ground on it. It suits softer Western knives, not hard steel.
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• Around 1000 is where most cooks can do most of their sharpening, then finish on about 2000.
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• 6000 or 8000 gives a polished, mirror-like finish, used for a special knife such as a Japanese sashimi knife.
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Work from a coarser stone toward finer ones. You do not need every stone, though: even 800 alone gives a very sharp edge. Good technique matters more than the stone, and it comes with practice.

Setting up the stone

• Put a towel in a tray and set the stone on top.
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• Flatten the top of the stone with a stone fixer before you start. Dips or hollows in the surface make it hard to sharpen the knife evenly.
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• Leave the slurry where it is. This is the muddy paste of tiny ground particles that forms on the wet stone, and it is what actually sharpens the knife. Do not rinse it away.
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• Keep the stone wet the whole time you work. Gray, silty liquid gathering on the blade is normal.
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Bevels and angles

• A double-bevel knife is ground to the same angle on both sides, so the edge sits in the middle.
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• A single-bevel knife is ground mostly on one side, often in a split of about 90% to 10%.
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On a double-bevel knife, the angle of each side is usually about 20 degrees on a Western knife. On a Japanese-style knife it is usually about 15 degrees, sometimes 17.

Small guides that set the angle can be bought, but a little arithmetic is simpler. Take the width of the blade (measure it, or judge it by eye) and divide it by four. Raise the spine (the back of the blade) off the stone by that much, and you are near 15 degrees. Divide the width by three instead and raise it by that, and you are near 20 degrees. With experience, you can judge the angle by eye.

The sharpening stroke

• Hold the handle in one hand; that hand gives the pressure. Rest the fingers of the other hand on the blade to keep the pressure even.
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• Place the heel of the blade (the end nearest the handle) at the far end of the stone.
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• Draw the knife slowly back toward you. Use the whole length of the stone and pass the whole length of the blade over it. Hold the same angle all the way.
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• Press only lightly. Press a little more as you pull back, and very lightly as you push forward. A heavy push can let the edge dig into the stone and chip both the stone and the knife.
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• Give one side 16 to 20 strokes. Turn the knife over and give the other side the same.
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• Keep turning it, with fewer strokes each time: 8, then 4, then 2, and at last one stroke on each side in turn.
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Cutting down the strokes this way grinds both sides evenly. It stops too much metal coming off one side, and stops the very edge from rolling over on itself.

Practice and the burr

Do not expect it to work the first time. A first try can leave a knife no sharper, or even duller. With practice the work gets faster, the angle starts to feel natural, and a cook learns to feel the burr on the edge. If you are nervous, learn on a cheap knife first. Fine scratches on the side of a blade are normal on a knife that is used a lot.

A well-sharpened knife can cut a tomato into slices so thin they are nearly see-through.

Honing rods and strops

Do not use a honing rod on a hard-steel knife. The rod can crack or chip such a blade and do more harm than good. If a cook insists on using one, they should use no pressure at all.

For hard steel, use a strop instead: a strip of leather fixed to a block, like the leather strap a barber uses.

• Rub the green polishing paste that comes with it onto the leather.
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• Hold the knife at the same 15-degree angle as on the stone.
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• Only pull, with the edge trailing. Never push the edge forward into the leather, or it will cut it.
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Stropping gives the edge its final alignment. When a knife starts to cut a little less well, a strop will bring the edge back, up to the point where the knife is truly dull and needs the stone.

How often to sharpen, and daily care

There is no fixed timetable. One approach is to rotate several knives, use each until it is annoyingly dull, then sharpen a batch together, a couple of times a year at most. A hard-steel knife can go a very long time between sharpenings.

A knife keeps its edge only if it is not abused:

• Always cut on a cutting board.
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• Do not cut through bones.
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• Do not cut through frozen food.
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• Never cut on glass.
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Storing knives

Never keep knives loose in a drawer, where they knock together and lose their edge. Use a knife block that fits inside the drawer. At the very least, fit each knife with an edge guard, a plastic or leather sleeve that covers the blade.

4.4 The classic cuts and their sizes

Kitchens share a standard set of named cuts for vegetables. Each one has an agreed shape, and most have an agreed size, so a cook who reads "small dice" knows exactly what to cut. The sizes are given both in inches and in metric units.

Dice: even cubes

There are four sizes of dice. The smallest, brunoise, is a very fine cube.

Each size, cut from a squared-off potato, with its measurement:

• brunoise at 1/8 inch
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• small dice at 1/4 inch
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• medium dice at 1/2 inch
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• large dice at 3/4 inch
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Sticks: julienne and batonnet

Stick cuts are long and thin. All three share a length of 2 inches (5 cm). They differ in how thick they are.

The sticks, cut the same way, are each about 2 inches long: fine julienne at 1/16 inch square , julienne at 1/8 inch , and the allumette, or matchstick, at 1/4 inch . Stack no more than three slices at a time, so they do not slide apart under the knife.

Shaped cuts with no set size

Four more classic cuts are known by their shape rather than a measurement.

• Tourné: a small barrel. Seen from the end, it has seven faces.
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• Rondelle: a round slice.
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• Paysanne: a flat square.
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• Chiffonade: leaves shredded very finely.
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Cuts made ahead of service

Some cuts are part of a cook's mise en place. Common examples are:

• minced garlic
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• minced parsley
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• diced bell pepper
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• tomato concassée
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Some other standard mise en place preparations are:

• the bouquet garni
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• the sachet d'épice
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• mirepoix
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• matignon
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Putting the cuts to work on vegetables

Here is how a set of common vegetables is cut before cooking.

• Cabbage, red or green. Pull off the outside leaves and wash the head. You do not need to cut out all of the core. Use a chef's knife to shred the cabbage into pieces small enough to eat in one bite.
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• Cauliflower. Break the head into small florets, then wash them.
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• Carrots. Peel and wash them, then cut slices ¼ inch thick. With a big carrot, cut it lengthwise into four long pieces first, then slice across.
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• Broccoli. Cut thin spears of about 2 inches, then wash them.
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• Onions. Take off the outer skin and trim away the root end. Leave a small onion whole, but cut a cross about ½ inch deep into its base. Cut a large onion into bite-size pieces.
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To loosen onion skins quickly, drop the onions into boiling water for around 10 seconds. Drain them and let them cool. The skins then slide off.

4.5 Preparing raw fruit and vegetables

Raw produce needs the right tool for each task, and its own set of techniques. Two aims guide the work: to know which utensil suits each kind of preparation, and to build skill with particular fruits and vegetables.

Tools for raw produce

Beyond the chef's knife, these tools are used to prepare fruit and vegetables:

• a garlic press
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• a vegetable parer, or peeler
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• a coarse grater, and a fine grater or rasp grater
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• a corer
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• a zester
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Words for preparing produce

These kitchen terms are used when you work with raw fruit and vegetables.

• Peel or pare: take the skin off a fruit or vegetable.
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• Zest: small bits of the skin of a lemon, lime or orange, used to add flavor. A zester is the usual tool.
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• Slice: a flat piece, often thin, cut from something larger.
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• Blanch: put food into boiling water for a short time, then lift it out and plunge it into ice water.
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Techniques for particular foods

Each fruit and vegetable has its own way of being cleaned, opened or cut. Techniques worth learning include:

• soaking produce in salt water
• cleaning mushrooms
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• preparing broccoli stems
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• preparing vegetables that have a wax coating
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• cutting a grapefruit into sections
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• cleaning and dicing a mango
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• cutting an avocado in half
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• taking the core out of lettuce
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• cleaning and slicing a cantaloupe
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• blanching tomatoes or peaches
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What happens inside the produce

Raw fruit and vegetables differ in color, flavor and texture. Five terms describe what happens inside them:

• Pigments give the colors: chlorophyll, carotenoids, anthocyanin and anthoxanthin.
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• Flavors fall into three groups: mild, Brassica and Allium.
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• Texture depends on cellulose, pectin and hemicellulose.
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• Enzymatic browning
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• Osmosis
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