Knife Skill and Abilities.

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HumbleHomeCook

HumbleHomeCook

Embrace your knifesculinity!
KKF Supporting Member
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This morning I was watching a knife review/demo and the presenter's cutting skills were quite good. Nothing unusual there but it did get me to pondering about the subject. I've pondered my own abilities a lot and still do but I also got to pondering how much weight should it be given when choosing, or maybe more importantly, recommending knives? What are the knife skills and abilities of of my fellow KKF'ers?

Back when I used to shoot a lot more, I was keenly aware my tools were generally more capable than I was. And they didn't need to be very fancy for that to be true. I find the same applies to my knives, probably more so in my own case. No doubt a pro chef or skilled home blade-weilder could grab one of my knives, tuned or not, and wring out a lot more performance than I generally can.

Now, I do have some physical issues that complicate things, and that plays into the abilities side but I'm also keenly aware that many folks just have more skill than I do. People flying through garlic and onions at a blurring pace? Yeah, that's not me. :) And it never will be and I'm cool with that. But I still like to strive to improve, especially in precision and versatility. I want the comfort of rocking, pushing, slicing, etc. on the fly as the knife, ingredient, and goal dictate.

I learned as a kid that seeing yourself on tape was a powerful teacher. @ian started one of my favorite KKF threads: For The Love Of Cutting. When I watch myself I see all kinds of mistakes and opportunities to improve. When I watch others, I pick up on many things. The off hand, the angle of approach, the way the knife is held, the precision applied vs. speed and volume, personal techniques, etc. I remember seeing a video by @JBroida a long time ago about cutting and knife techniques. Yeah, yeah. I'd seen a ton of videos about how to dice a carrot or slice an onion so I paid it little attention. But I revisited it later and I realized what Jon was presenting was a lot more information than that. How you stand, body angle, board placement, etc. were all considered and I think important.

When I talk to friends/family who are interested in upping their knife game (however they define that) I find a theme that often they don't even know a lot of basic knife techniques. I suspect so many of us watch and study this stuff so much that we take that for granted but a whole lot of people don't know how to properly dice an onion or matchstick carrots. I've started recommending people watch videos on cutting techniques.

We geek out over every tiny little aspect of our knives from distal taper to sharpening to each maker's KU finish robustness. Handles to stones, we dive into it. I just hope that behind the scenes we're putting that much effort into getting the most out of them on the board (which we also geek out over).

Anyway, like I said, it just got me to pondering.

How are your knife skills KKF?
 
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Poor to roughly average.

Doing the same thing over and over again one does learn to be more efficient, and muscle memory also helps me out eventually.

Kinda just realized I’m good at cutting some things in a specific way, but general skills (my food holding hand sucks) are lacking. Makes sense I suppose.

Fortunately I don’t make a living using my knives 🤣.
 
On board, I would say I am proficient. In hand, still have a lot to be desired. Butchery, I am an infant, I can handle knives well but lack the knowledge of best practices. I can execute all I need to in butchery, but I’d say what im doing is 15% “correct.”
 
it's never held me back, but i am not particularly skilled. as a home cook, imho, i don't cut up enough stuff to build serious skills. no one watching me work is going to think i've ever worked in the industry doing prep all day.
 
Been in a kitchen for about 9 months now, the increase in skill I see monthly is still very fast. I almost always work overtime and I volunteer for a lot of the knife work prep, plus when it's not catering season I'm always on garde so there's always knife work to do. Just did half a gallon of fine brunoise red onions at close for bruschetta tomorrow.
 
One thing I've learned when I have a JKnife in hand is to give it 100% concentration. Whenever I've been distracted or lackadaisical I get cut, usually by the heel. Pain is a great motivator.
 
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Corradobrit1 said:
On thing I've learned when I have a JKnife in hand is to give it 100% concentration. Whenever I've been distracted or lackadaisical I get cut, usually by the heel. Pain is a great motivator.
Click to expand...

Very true. The oft-repeated "sharp knives are safer to use than dull knives" doesn't hold true if you have bad technique or aren't paying attention to what you're doing...
 
But wounds from a sharp knife heal much faster. And generally speaking you'll be using a lot less pressure so whatever accidents that do happen tend to be smaller.
Though I have to say that these days I rarely cut myself...whenever I do it's usually something silly like hitting the heel of the knife while putting it in or taking it out of a saya.
 
I teach knife skills on the side. One thing I notice, even in the very young, is that it is really hard to break habits if you don't keenly focus. It is one reason that I tell my students over and over, don't think about going fast, think about using proper form, speed will come naturally once you've mastered form.
People have it ingrained that cutting is up and down chopping, I find myself constantly saying, "push the knife forward, tip slightly down" and what do they do? They push the knife forward for and instant and immediately return to up and down chopping, it is crazy making. The other thing that I find difficult to impart is keeping the knife straight, especially with my kids for some reason, I'll get their body properly angled, check their grip (clearly I start teaching push cutting, and with a pinch grip) for a right-hander that means body at almost 45 degrees with left hip into the table, then the knife should be straight, perpendicular to the front and back edges of the board, parallel with the right and left sides. Again, as an example, my youngest will start that way for a hot second, I blink and then suddenly her knife is at some wonky angle, this is not uncommon. For older students, the pinch grip is sometimes a challenging concept, I get it, if you've used the hammer grip all your life, it is difficult. I learned pinch pretty late in life too, for some reason I took to it without too much trouble. For some reason when I am slicing using a suji, even I will sometimes revert back to hammer time.
 
One thing that was hard for me to quit is rock chopping the way I was taught to way back before I every held a hard tempered Japanese knife. In fact sometimes I pull out my old Wusthof just to do it. Even if I am using a J-knife, if it is a small quantity, I'll sometimes throw caution to the wind and do it anyway, maybe backing off the downward pressure a bit.

If that is unlear, this is what I'm referring to at 26 seconds in:
 
chefwp said:
I teach knife skills on the side. One thing I notice, even in the very young, is that it is really hard to break habits if you don't keenly focus. It is one reason that I tell my students over and over, don't think about going fast, think about using proper form, speed will come naturally once you've mastered form.
People have it ingrained that cutting is up and down chopping, I find myself constantly saying, "push the knife forward, tip slightly down" and what do they do? They push the knife forward for and instant and immediately return to up and down chopping, it is crazy making. The other thing that I find difficult to impart is keeping the knife straight, especially with my kids for some reason, I'll get their body properly angled, check their grip (clearly I start teaching push cutting, and with a pinch grip) for a right-hander that means body at almost 45 degrees with left hip into the table, then the knife should be straight, perpendicular to the front and back edges of the board, parallel with the right and left sides. Again, as an example, my youngest will start that way for a hot second, I blink and then suddenly her knife is at some wonky angle, this is not uncommon. For older students, the pinch grip is sometimes a challenging concept, I get it, if you've used the hammer grip all your life, it is difficult. I learned pinch pretty late in life too, for some reason I took to it without too much trouble. For some reason when I am slicing using a suji, even I will sometimes revert back to hammer time.
Click to expand...
Any tip on how to move the holding hand "smoothly"? I know you are suppose to make a claw, put the middle/index knukle against the knife to avoid cutting yourself. but in some cutting video I've seen, people were able to move the holding hand smoothly to the left, in sync with the knife cutting motion, while still holding the ingredient securely in place. I have to do it in "segments", i.e. move my holding hand, cut cut cut, move hand again, cut cut cut and so on.
 
NotAddictedYet said:
Any tip on how to move the holding hand "smoothly"? I know you are suppose to make a claw, put the middle/index knukle against the knife to avoid cutting yourself. but in some cutting video I've seen, people were able to move the holding hand smoothly to the left, in sync with the knife cutting motion, while still holding the ingredient securely in place. I have to do it in "segments", i.e. move my holding hand, cut cut cut, move hand again, cut cut cut and so on.
Click to expand...
I feel this.

You guys know what was awesome? I think one of @stringer ’s videos I saw him chop stuff without the guide hand when you get to the end of the substrate. Just one or two quick cuts. I think it was while cubing potatoes. It’s liberating to see a pro do it and now I don’t have to fiddle with the last ends and reposition and is it the same size blah blah blah. It’s changed how I prep and I can’t say how much I appreciate it.
 
knowledge / proficiency+speed / the "setup" / time

One's knowledge of various cutting techniques - French vs. Japanese vs. Chinese... Various veg cuts. Butchery techniques, both land and sea. Hanging whole carcass butchery or gomai oroshi of flat fish as examples of advanced technique. Easily accessible info now, thanks to books+internet.

Overall proficiency/speed/skill level - How clean and consistent, and how long does it take? Uniformity? Yield of product available to cook? Better technique will net more actual product to cook/eat.

The stance/grip/head position/distance from board/counter height/knife size - how good is your "setup" and how comfortable/suited to your build? (Many of the taller cooks I've worked with preferred bigger knives and boards, and needed to elevate/stack cutting boards so to not kill their backs being stooped over cutting endlessly.)

The sheer amount of practice and time spent cutting is the ultimate factor IMO...
 
Watch @stringer work is definitely illuminating.

Depending on what I'm cutting I'm using push-cut, rock chop, pull cut, draw cut. It all depends on what the product is and how tall it is (I tend to switch from push cut to rock chop as I break product down into smaller pieces). The one thing I constantly work on is uniformity of the cut - trying to make the pieces the same size. Other thing I need to work on in my guide hand as my thumb sneaks out every so often.
 
NotAddictedYet said:
Any tip on how to move the holding hand "smoothly"? I know you are suppose to make a claw, put the middle/index knukle against the knife to avoid cutting yourself. but in some cutting video I've seen, people were able to move the holding hand smoothly to the left, in sync with the knife cutting motion, while still holding the ingredient securely in place. I have to do it in "segments", i.e. move my holding hand, cut cut cut, move hand again, cut cut cut and so on.
Click to expand...
While I was working as a chef, I taught loads of apprentices how to use a knife... and I realised that their holding hand was the biggest culprit for poor beginner knife-skills.

I worked out a neat way of explaining it, by getting them to catch an onion in their off-hand, then I'd point at their thumb and explain that a huge part of getting comfortable with a knife is getting used to holding the food in your off hand in a way that their thumb is replaced by the cutting board. For some reason, this explanation clicks with a lot of people. Hope it helps you!
 
I cut quickly. But my cutting and sharpening abilities are really more about efficiency. Time is money. I have always worked at high volume places with high prep demands. I learned how to be fast and efficient to survive. But I think if people were more efficient at cutting stuff at home then they would be more likely to eat fresh produce and less processed food. All of the videos I post on here are either me prepping something for a restaurant or prepping dinner at home. I am moving fast not to show off, but because I want to make dinner, eat it, and go to bed after a 12+ hour workday. I teach the same techniques (in slow motion) to Boys and Girls Club students, community college culinary students, workforce development students, medical students, community nutrition outreach folks, nursing home residents, etc. Like said above, getting the technique down is the most important thing. But I'll take it a step further. If you have good technique, regardless of your speed you'll complete tasks quicker because of efficiency improvements. And if your knife is sharper you will have more fun. So there you have it folks, the key to solving the world's diet induced morbidity issues is sharp knives and cutting and sharpening lessons.
 
NotAddictedYet said:
Any tip on how to move the holding hand "smoothly"? I know you are suppose to make a claw, put the middle/index knukle against the knife to avoid cutting yourself. but in some cutting video I've seen, people were able to move the holding hand smoothly to the left, in sync with the knife cutting motion, while still holding the ingredient securely in place. I have to do it in "segments", i.e. move my holding hand, cut cut cut, move hand again, cut cut cut and so on.
Click to expand...
I read this a while ago and have thought about it a bit. This is difficult for me to answer without seeing what you are doing, to what you are doing it to, and what you are doing it with. There are a lot of variables here. It is easier to look 'smooth' if you are dicing bats or squared off potatoes, you have a tall knife and long fingers... One question to ask yourself is: are you trying to cut a reasonable amount of stuff at once? Start with smaller quantities until you have a better feel, some product is going to be easier than others, squared off carrots or potatoes are going to be easier to do than a handful of squirrely chives or rolly polly scallions. I bet you have less of an issue dicing beef or tuna for your tartare because it is firmly stuck to your board.

If your fingers are long enough you can slowly straighten them allowing the blade to move along laterally and smoothly, and then when they are at their limit, tuck your fingertips back and repeat; you can sort of do this with your three middles (index, middle, ring), meanwhile ease back your pinky and thumb so your product doesn't lose form and spread out. A taller blade will make this easier for some.

Using my example of trying to cut little perfect circles of chives, if you are having a terrible time, try to reduce the quantity you are trying to do at once until you find the sweet spot. Once you've mastered a smaller quantity and get a feel, try a bit more next time until you reach the point of diminishing returns, there will be a limit. I know it sounds a little cliche, but mastering small quantities, rinse, repeat, up the challenge a bit, and practice practice practice; and I am confident you will get the feel for it.

The last thing I'll mention is stay loose with your holding hand, hold the product with the least amount of pressure necessary to keep it together.
 
stringer said:
I cut quickly. But my cutting and sharpening abilities are really more about efficiency. Time is money. I have always worked at high volume places with high prep demands. I learned how to be fast and efficient to survive. But I think if people were more efficient at cutting stuff at home then they would be more likely to eat fresh produce and less processed food. All of the videos I post on here are either me prepping something for a restaurant or prepping dinner at home. I am moving fast not to show off, but because I want to make dinner, eat it, and go to bed after a 12+ hour workday. I teach the same techniques (in slow motion) to Boys and Girls Club students, community college culinary students, workforce development students, medical students, community nutrition outreach folks, nursing home residents, etc. Like said above, getting the technique down is the most important thing. But I'll take it a step further. If you have good technique, regardless of your speed you'll complete tasks quicker because of efficiency improvements. And if your knife is sharper you will have more fun. So there you have it folks, the key to solving the world's diet induced morbidity issues is sharp knives and cutting and sharpening lessons.
Click to expand...

One of the biggest take-aways I've gotten from watching your cutting videos is just to go. I love how you spin strips of whatever ingredient, generally gathering them back up and then just start cutting. Your stuff is already in the pan and I've just finished getting everything all precisely lined up.

I'm much less finicky now and I've for sure sped up. Not to say sloppy by any stretch and I'm careful when it matters but chunking up stuff for stir fry and such? Yeah, just go.
 
HumbleHomeCook said:
This morning I was watching a knife review/demo and the presenter's cutting skills were quite good. Nothing unusual there but it did get me to pondering about the subject. I've pondered my own abilities a lot and still do but I also got to pondering how much weight should it be given when choosing, or maybe more importantly, recommending knives? What are the knife skills and abilities of of my fellow KKF'ers?

Back when I used to shoot a lot more, I was keenly aware my tools were generally more capable than I was. And they didn't need to be very fancy for that to be true. I find the same applies to my knives, probably more so in my own case. No doubt a pro chef or skilled home blade-weilder could grab one of my knives, tuned or not, and wring out a lot more performance than I generally can.

Now, I do have some physical issues that complicate things, and that plays into the abilities side but I'm also keenly aware that many folks just have more skill than I do. People flying through garlic and onions at a blurring pace? Yeah, that's not me. :) And it never will be and I'm cool with that. But I still like to strive to improve, especially in precision and versatility. I want the comfort of rocking, pushing, slicing, etc. on the fly as the knife, ingredient, and goal dictate.

I learned as a kid that seeing yourself on tape was a powerful teacher. @ian started one of my favorite KKF threads: For The Love Of Cutting. When I watch myself I see all kinds of mistakes and opportunities to improve. When I watch others, I pick up on many things. The off hand, the angle of approach, the way the knife is held, the precision applied vs. speed and volume, personal techniques, etc. I remember seeing a video by @JBroida a long time ago about cutting and knife techniques. Yeah, yeah. I'd seen a ton of videos about how to dice a carrot or slice an onion so I paid it little attention. But I revisited it later and I realized what Jon was presenting was a lot more information than that. How you stand, body angle, board placement, etc. were all considered and I think important.

When I talk to friends/family who are interested in upping their knife game (however they define that) I find a theme that often they don't even know a lot of basic knife techniques. I suspect so many of us watch and study this stuff so much that we take that for granted but a whole lot of people don't know how to properly dice an onion or matchstick carrots. I've started recommending people watch videos on cutting techniques.

We geek out over every tiny little aspect of our knives from distal taper to sharpening to each maker's KU finish robustness. Handles to stones, we dive into it. I just hope that behind the scenes we're putting that much effort into getting the most out of them on the board (which we also geek out over).

Anyway, like I said, it just got me to pondering.

How are your knife skills KKF?
Click to expand...

I knew a guy who was on the knife team at his cooking school.

Who knew! They would have competitions w/ other schools.
Speed & Accuracy. They actually measure the size of the dices and brunois and the eveness of the straws.
 
Thanks everyone for the tips, got lots of ideas to try now. I do want to echo stringer's point. Having a nice knife completely changed the "cooking at home" experience; prep used to be a chore but now I hardly want to get take out anymore. I will never go back again. Working on improving my cutting technique is just part of the fun for me.
 
As a home cook I’m definitely average, but one thing I’ve noticed is that since I’ve got into more elaborate knives I’ve actually found myself slowing down a bit. I’ve been sharpening for years but I’ve only been into Japanese style knives for the last four or five years and I just enjoy feeling the cutting prowess of my knives so much and the edge I can put on them I just find myself taking my time. Of course I’m usually under no pressure to produce something in a hurry.

I’ve also been trying hard to learn the appropriate techniques instead of the hack and slash that came from years of using inferior equipment and I think I’m actually getting better, but still along ways to go.
 
@stringer Question for you.

If there was no rush. And a bunch of us threw in some dough to help cover your time.

Would you be willing to make a comprehensive video series of knife skill instruction for KKF?

Im thinking basics to intermediate of whatever you feel is most critical, and often used, for cooking in general. (Of course feel free to show off some cool additional tips and tricks to keep it interesting for you in the process)


I think this would be a HUGE asset for the community and-- if you posted it on YT-- could very easily be the best resource I've ever seen.

And ive searched this a minimum of20-30 times.

I'm pretty certain we could draw a bit of interest from members here..

What say ye?
 
ch_br said:
@stringer Question for you.

If there was no rush. And a bunch of us threw in some dough to help cover your time.

Would you be willing to make a comprehensive video series of knife skill instruction for KKF?

Im thinking basics to intermediate of whatever you feel is most critical, and often used, for cooking in general. (Of course feel free to show off some cool additional tips and tricks to keep it interesting for you in the process)


I think this would be a HUGE asset for the community and-- if you posted it on YT-- could very easily be the best resource I've ever seen.

And ive searched this a minimum of20-30 times.

I'm pretty certain we could draw a bit of interest from members here..

What say ye?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the kind words. But I couldn't do it. No time. And no filming equipment. I couldn't produce something effectively that's any better than what's already out there for basics stuff. Jon and Peter got that covered. Besides anything I do different than anyone else is mostly already out there in my YouTube with explanations in various threads on KKF. I'm always happy to do little videos to demonstrate or explain advanced techniques or answer any questions on here. If you look on my profile page of threads I have started, I explain all of my thoughts and theories and whatnot over the past several years. Just read through them and ask questions. Someday I do plan on organizing my YouTube channel a bit better, but if you use KKF kind of as a guide to my YouTube channel, it will make more sense. But mostly the best thing you can do to improve cutting and sharpening is practice. For every ten minutes you spend on YouTube, you should spend about 10 hours practicing.
 
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