Culinary knife skill techniques are one of the first things you need to master to work in a professional kitchen or just take your cooking to the next level. A large part of a commercial kitchen's operation revolves around their daily prep; there is no quality prep without efficient and accurate knife skills.
This HD video series will start with the basics, like how to set up your cutting board, hold your knife and basic skills like dicing and julienne. The series then moves into more advanced prep techniques, along with tutorials on how to sharpen your knife, butchery, and basic meat fabrication.
"Knife Skills - HD" was formulated as an extension of SCS Episode 1| Basic Knife Skills, an audio lecture covering this subject. It is highly recommended that you listen to this lecture before watching these videos. As this is on ongoing series, if you have any request for new knife skill technique videos, please leave them in the comment section below.
Before you start to cut anything, you need to make sure you have a secure work surface. A cutting board that isn’t secured can easily move around, making it extremely dangerous and almost impossible to cut quickly and accurately.
An important cornerstone of all great knife skills techniques, this video will teach you how to hold your chef's knife in a professional grip.
Learning how to properly use your guide hand will not only improve the overall accuracy of your knife skills, but it will also keep you from slicing off your thumb, (a small added bonus).
Understanding the three major knife cuts used in culinary knife skills will give you a simplified view point allowing you to streamline your prep and easily choose the proper technique to achieve your desired outcome.
This video will teach you the classic, foundational cuts of dice, julienne, brunoise and batonnet.
This video will demonstrate the classic approach to dicing an onion.
Learn the classic technique for cutting an onion into thin strips (julienne).
Many people, including cooks that work in a professional kitchen, do not know the true technique for mincing a red onion. A lot of people first dice their onion, and then run their knife over the dice in a mincing motion until the onions are a minced, pulverized paste. This video will teach you how to finely mince a red onion without completely pulvarizing it.
Diced and seeded tomatoes are a great accompaniment to pastas and sautéd vegetable medleys. They can even be used as a garnish. This video will teach you the best technique to quickly seed and dice a tomato.
Garnishing your plate with a little sprinkling of parsley is about as old school as it gets. However, it’s still a good technique to at least know, not to mention the real purpose of this section - illustrating how to properly mince.
The Chiffonade is a knife technique used to cut herb leafs and other leafy greens into very thin hair-like strips. These fine strips are then usually used as a garnish.
This video will teach you how to quickl seed, julienne, and dice a bell pepper.
The portobello mushroom is a fully-grown Crimino mushroom which is an un-blanched version of the white button mushroom, commonly found in supermarkets. Although blanching usually refers to par cooking, in the agricultural industry it refers to growing produce in the absences of light, not allowing it to produce any color. This video will teach you how to properly clean and slice a portobello mushroom.
Cutting lemon wedges for garnish is another knife skill’s technique that is deceptively simple yet often done wrong. There’s nothing worse then getting a lopsided lemon wedge to squeeze into your iced tea or cocktail only to see its seeds shooting into your glass. This video will teach you the proper technique when cutting lemon wedges for garnishes.
This video will teach you how to pit, slice and dice an avocado.
This video will teach you how to properly peel, slice, and mince fresh ginger.
This may seem like a simple and self-explanatory technique, but there is definitely a right and wrong way to peel a vegetable.
This video will teach you how to properly peel and mince garlic.
Although this technique may look simple, slicing mushrooms is an advanced knife skill because it requires complete mastery over your guide hand technique. This video will teach you how to properly slice a button mushroom.
This video will teach you how to peel, core, and slice a pineapple.
This video will teach you how to peel and slice any seeded melon including honeydew melon and cantaloupe.
Citrus Supremes are basically citrus segments without any seeds, pith, or membrane. They make a great addition to an elegant salad, or as a garnish on any number of dishes.
Learn how to properly clean and trim frisee.
This video will teach you the unqiue technique used to create the distint look of an asian style dice and julienne.
This video will teach you how to sharpen your chef's knife using an oil tri-stone.
When sharpening a Japanese knife, it is important that you always use a water stone, unless otherwise instructed by the manufacturer. Using an oilstone can actually dull a Japanese blade, or even completely ruin it. This video will teach you how to sharpen a Japanese style knife using a wet stone.
This video will teach you how to butcher a whole chicken into a six part and eight part breakdown.
This video will teach you how to fabricate an airline chicken breast.
This video will demonstrate how to break down (butcher) a chicken in under 60 seconds.
This video will teach you how to fabricate chicken lollipops by frenching down the bone of a chicken wing.
This video will teach you how to break down a whole duck into it's individual parts.
This video will teach you how to butcher a pork rack and fabricate into chops.
High grade ahi tuna is great for both sashimi and searing rare. Because of its delicate flavor and texture, good ahi should always be served raw, or at the very least, seared very quickly over high heat and served rare. This video will teach you how to butcher an ahi loin into "soku block" used for sushi, or steaks, which you can use for searing.
This video will teach you how to cut a carrot using the dice and julienne techniques.
In this video, you'll learn how to quickly and efficiently break down a beef tenderloin, resulting in the fabrication of beef filets. These filets are commonly referred to as "Filet Mignon," but technically speaking, the "Mingnon" only comes from the bottom tail portion and is normally cut 1-2" thick. When fabricating larger steaks, "filet of beef" is the more appropriate term. For more information about the beef tenderloin itself, please see below.
In this video, you will learn a couple different techniques for seeding, slicing and dicing an English Cucumber.
In this video, learn how to slice and dice celery.
This video will teach you how to fabricate fillets of halibut from a large side.
This video will teach you how to properly peel, slice and dice a watermelon.
This video will teach you one of many techniques for butchering a whole salmon, or any "symmetrical fish," as opposed to a flat fish like halibut or sole.
This video will demonstrate how to safely wash your chef's knife.
In this video, we go over how to debone a chicken leg and thigh. Once deboned, the leg and thigh can be cooked flat, rolled into a roulade or even stuffed.
This video will demonstrate how to take a hind quarter, remove the thigh bone and then "French" the leg bone. What results is a semi-boneless chicken leg and thigh that can then be stuffed with any number of delicious fillings and force meats. For part two of this video, which demonstrates the stuffing and cooking process, please refer to the first video listed in the "Related" section below.
Roasting a turkey whole is difficult because the breast and legs cook at different rates. This video will show you how to break down a whole turkey into it's individual parts. Once broken down, you can pan roast the breast, turn the leg into a roulade, and make a roasted turkey stock.
In a previous video, I demonstrated how to break down a whole turkey into its individual parts. In this video I demonstrate how to completely de-bone the turkey leg, including those pesky feather bones.
In this video, I demonstrate how to de-bone and tie a beef short rib for braising. This is commonly seen in higher end restaurants and is done for presentation purposes only.
When serving a large short rib, it is sometimes difficult to have a tight, clean presentation, especially when a round plate is used. The short rib can often look awkward and unbalanced. Rolling and tying the short rib will allow for a tighter plate presentation.
When using this technique, make sure you still include the bones in the braising liquid.
