Techniques - Knife Skills 1

     It slices!  It dices!  It julienne fries!  If you've not heard that, you haven't listened to a joke about "As Seen on TV" kitchen gadgets.  The thing about these gadgets that everyone finds so tempting is they make knife skills unnecessary.  However, we're trying to make a kitchen on a budget, and since we're talking about knives for the next two weeks, we might as well talk about how to use them.
     Knife skills are some of the most important techniques in the kitchen even though, on the surface they seem trivial.  In their basic form, good knife skills are supposed to make it so each piece of food is the same size and shape.  Why is that important?  Well, according to the laws of physics, items that are the same size cook at the same rate.  That means, if you have some small pieces and some large pieces, the small pieces may get burnt while the large pieces cook or the large pieces stay raw.  Unfortunately, knife skills aren't something that come immediately.  You'll need to practice them for a while before you get it right every time.  When I was learning my knife skills, I made a lot of soup and stock where it really wasn't that important.  Or you could make mashed potatoes after you're done practicing.  Really, just practice any time you get a chance.
     There is one thing you must do to safely and correctly cut food with a knife.  You must hold the food correctly.  A proper food hold prevents you from cutting the tips of your fingers off.  No one wants your fingers in their food.  Zest of mom (or dad) is in bad taste (sorry for that pun) when you serve dinner.  Here's a picture I'm borrowing from Danilo Alfaro's guide to using a chef's knife.

 

     What you should notice about that picture is that his fingers are bent backward away from the knife.  Your knuckles then provide a surface for the flat of the blade to rest upon as you cut.  That means, if you slip, the most it'll do is skin you up a little bit.  That's still way better than cutting off your fingertip.  If you're already in the habit of cutting with your fingers flattened out, this is going to take a lot of practice.  Just keep reminding yourself to bend your fingers as you cut.  Add an extra 15 to 20 minutes to your prep time until you get used to it.  Before you know it, you'll be doing it out of habit.

     So, let's get down to some actual knife skills.  While I talk about knives in the equipment section, I'll be going over different knife skills so that you know how to use what you got.  This week I'll talk about julienning and dicing because they kind of flow into one another.  Once you learn how to make one, you can make the other.  The thing about both of these is that they come in different sizes.  I'll talk about how to make them and then I'll tell you the technical terms at the end.  The basic truth about knife cuts is that when you get the larger versions down, the small versions will come easier.  For a while, work on your large dice and then work it down from there.

    While I'm using pictures and video of me cutting, I'm going to use the pictures from Danilo Alfaro's gallery on about.com for the completed knife cuts.  That's because he has an excellent gallery of very well-done cuts that are on a good contrast background.

    First, you're going to want to cut your food into uniform sections so that you can use those sections to make your pieces. I recommend doing this with either a potato or a carrot first as they're hard vegetables and won't squish if you grip them too hard.  Take a carrot or potato and cut it into 2 to 3 inch sections.  If you want to make really sure that the pieces are the same, cut one section then line the rest of the vegetable up next to it and use it to measure the next section.

     Then, you're going to want to square off the edges of your sections.  Take one, put it cut end down on the board and slice off the round part of one of the sides.  Then lay the section down on the cut side and cut off the two rounded sides you see when you look down on it.  Turn it on one of those and cut off the fourth side.

      When you make your cuts, you'll want to keep the tip of the knife on the cutting board.  This provides you leverage and helps prevent knife slippage which usually ends in bleeding on your vegetables.  Tip:  you can't cook a vegetarian meal if it has your blood in it.
     Now, you're going to want to make sticks out of your vegetable.  For the purpose of this, we'll work on a medium dice, so you're going to want to cut sticks from your sections that are about 1/2-inch square.  The 3 things that are important to remember here are that the sticks are all one length, they're all the same size across, and they're all square.  These sticks are called batonnets, if you care.  It's okay if you don't.

    

    Now line or stack these up on one another.  A tip I've seen a lot of chefs use is to push the sticks up against the blade of the knife to even them up.  I do it between each cut, just to make sure everything stays even.  Put the sticks perpendicular (I know, big math word) to your knife and cut them to make them 1/2-inch long.  This makes them the cubes that we call "medium dice."

Here's the whole thing in a video so you can see it, beginning to end.

     Welcome to the very basic cuts of the culinary arts.  Really, almost anything you make can be done with a medium dice or the batonnet cut.  Most people call the batonnet cut julienne, but they are different.  We'll get to that in just a second.  The beauty of this is, unless you need something sliced or minced (that's next week), you can pretty much use a medium dice for anything.  If you want to learn the smaller versions or larger version, that's up to you, but it's really your decision.  The other knife cuts, in order of size, are as follows:

Large Dice:  A 3/4-inch cube

Allumette: 2-3 inch sticks with 1/4-inch sides

Small dice:  1/4-inch cubes

Julienne:  2-3 inch sticks with 1/8-inch sides

Brunoise:  1/8-inch cubes

     I have literally used a brunoise cut twice in my life.  I know how to do it, but I haven't found a use for it in my every day life.  There are also fine julienne and brunoise cuts that are half the size.  If you get down that small, except for very specific instances, you'll probably want to just mince your food.