Extreme Knife Skills

When cooking started taking on an importance to me greater than basic sustenance, I went out and bought a wusthof knife set and block. If I had to do it over again I'd probable piece together a set from multiple manufacturers, but I am very happy with the performance of wusthof; their knives are sturdy, balanced and fit my hand great. Henckels is one I'd avoid in the future, I have a couple from them but think the quality is at least a tier below wusthof. Anyway, this trip down memory lane is leading to how getting good knives eventually meant using them, and over a period of 8 years, learning to use them well. I remember first opening that box and pulling out the 8" chef's knife, feeling the laser sharpened edge, and thinking "holy crap, I could definitely lose a finger with this". I was more than a little scared, but I fumbled my way around with them for the first year and gradually gained a little confidence after slicing my finger, thumb, etc about a dozen times. The accidents lessened with time, pain is a great teacher. Anyway, after 2 or 3 years of this I realized I was a total donkey with using these knives still and decided to learn how to use them a little better. I watched a cooking show here and there anyway so just started being more attentive with how the people on TV used a knife. What I found was that many of the cooks, not so much chefs, really weren't much better than me with a knife. But I thought "certainly there has to be some technique to this". I looked online and found a few sites with some basic pictures of different cutting techniques. I started with the onion, one of the most essential base ingredients in cuisine to street food around the world. Dicing, that would be the first technique I took on, but I really didn't do it well, I was slow and sliced my finger on the first go, and the second. What the heck was I doing wrong? Well the task lost its appeal for months, but eventually I became determined to get better. I started watching more closely how chefs did this on TV, and figured out a few tricks. The most basic of which was using the onion root to hold the thing together during chopping. Still I couldn't quite get the whole technique of keeping my hand holding the onion out of the way and moving fast. Well after purchasing a book from the culinary institute of America on knife skills, watching many more chefs chop onions, and a lot of practice, I think I've got it down pretty well. I'll never be able to do things like Wolfgang Puck, who can watch the camera while mincing onion, garlic, whatever ... I'm sure he could do such tasks blindfolded just as easily, but as I was pulverizing some white onion for guacamole tonight, I thought how I wished someone would have just given me a really good example of how to do it so I could have saved all that time.

After digging into youtube for "extreme knife skills", I found this example of chopping an onion...


The first part of the video demonstrates the elegance of movement you develop with a lot of experience. The basic technique here is slicing through the top, then the middle, then chopping. So my opinion here is the angling of the knife is inefficient and somewhat dangerous, though someone with a lot of practice can pull this technique off I'd say don't do it this way.

The next example I found was more basic, not as flashy and impressive, but utilitarian and approachable for the newcomer.




Another, which actually demonstrates really bad technique, but the speed of the knife is fast. I think this really illustrates that even if you're doing it wrong, you can do it fast, but you have to really buy into feeling the knife and guiding it with your non-chopping hand with fingers folded under (the knife slides its back 2/3rds of girth over your fingers between the second and third knuckle.


While this next one doesn't show a dice, this is a demonstration by Hung (winner of Top Chef season three). He's pretty much badass with a knife; notice that he mentions how 90% of his knife work is with one knife; makes you think do I really need that set of 8 knives? If you want to emulate someone, you could do a lot worse than this guy.


The closest to the technique I use which I could find on youtube was this one. The only difference between how I do it and this is that I make the lateral cuts into the onion first, then the vertical slices, then chop. Also, one thing not clear in any of these videos is what they are doing with the root. My recommendation is slice off the top of an unpealed onion, halve through the root (leaving the root intact), then lateral, vertical, chop. Your cuts should not penetrate the root, there will be a slight bit of waste, but nothing more than what you'd lose if you chopped the root off at the beginning. This makes everything stay in place much better and you can go really fast. I'm not as fast as Hung or Wolfgang, but I'm not too far behind, so if you want to become automatic with chopping an onion, bookmark this post and that last video and don't do what the guy in the first video does unless you like bandages, gauze, emergency rooms ...

One parting note, get a forged blade if you're serious about going fast. Don't use a stamped blade, dull blade, or forged blade without a full tang. Stamped blades are generally not well balanced and the knife can bounce or slip on you easily. You will cut yourself at some point, cuts with sharp blades heal more quickly than dull, if you don't believe me, imagine how many stitches you'd need if you took a wood saw to the back of your finger versus a sharp blade; you're much more likely to end up with hamburger with the former. Forged blades generally have a full tang, meaning the but of the blade metal goes into the handle. This helps to make the knife balance in the hand appropriate to the tasks it is suited for, but again, if there's only a partial tang you will slip, balance is never the same in my experience, even if it's perimeter weighted. Happy chopping!