Essential Knife Skills Every Home Cook MUST Know

Hey, what's up? My name's Brian. I used to be a fine dining restaurant chef, and in this video, I'm going to show you the essential knife skills every home cook should know. Today, I'm going to show you the basics of how to safely hold and use a knife so that you don't injure yourself, and then I'm going to show you guys the proper way to cut all of the most common ingredients that you use in a home kitchen. Before we cut stuff, I want to quickly talk about the knife that I think most home cooks should start learning knife skills with. I've got a standard issue eight-inch chef's knife here, and that's why I recommend most home cooks get started because, in my opinion, it's the most versatile and universal of all of the knives. It's kind of a jack-of-all-trades, master of most, like 93% of all the stuff you're going to cut in your home kitchen can be easily and effectively done with an eight-inch chef's knife. If you currently don't have a knife, I would say start shopping for something with this general form factor and size. The way to hold this thing safely is to go three fingers on the handle, thumb on the back side of the blade, and then pointer finger tucked up on the opposite side of the blade. This gives you, by far, the most stability, safety, and control. Just make sure that your pointer finger is nowhere near the bottom of the blade, because obviously you can cut it. Now I see a lot of home cooks instinctively using their whole fist with their thumb tucked behind all of their fingers, and I can see why instinctively you think that this works, but it's actually pretty unstable and not that safe. This fist-style grip takes your two most controlling fingers, your pointer and your thumb, completely out of play, and then you're left with using your wrist for articulation, and obviously that is not the most effective way to control the tip of a knife. The three fingers on the handle with your thumb and pointer on the blade gives you the most control, because it uses your entire hand muscles and your two strongest fingers to control where the tip of that blade is going. Another big no-no for knife grip would be to put your pointer finger across the top of the blade. This grip gives you just a little bit more control over where the tip of the knife is going, but your hand ends up being really far away from where the actual cutting is going on. Because of that, this method leads to a lot of inconsistency and instability. Also, with this move, your pointer finger pretty easily slides off, and if that happens, the knife grip becomes pretty unsafe. Another important part of this entire grip setup is your non-dominant hand. That's the hand that holds the food that you're cutting in place. Almost always when cutting, your left hand should be in the shape of a claw, like this. The fingertips hold the food in place, and your knuckles keep the blade away from your fingertips. You can also think of your knuckles as a guide. They can give you a little bit more control over where exactly the knife goes. Just make sure that you never lift your knife blade over the top of your knuckle, because for obvious reasons, you could easily cut down on your hand. This is the move that we're looking for. You're just sliding the knife up and down against the knuckle. Now that you guys know how to properly hold a knife without getting injured, next I'm going to show you guys all of the most common knife cuts that a home cook needs to know, starting with dicing an onion. First, I'll just cut off the south pole real quick, then I'll flip it onto its bottom, then cut the onion through the top from the north to the south. From here, I'm just going to peel off the papery skin, making sure to keep the stem end intact, or actually, the root end. That part right there. Keeping that intact keeps the onion held together a lot better while you cut it. Next, I'm going to set up my claw grip with my hand on top of the onion, then use the front of the blade to make seven to eight cuts across the top from side to side, making sure to pull the knife in a slicing motion. Don't press straight down here, because that turns the blade into a wedge, which drives the onion pieces apart. The next step is the part that takes the most practice. We're going to move the onion back towards the edge of the cutting board, then I'm going to gently slide my knife in with a saw maneuver, keeping my claw intact so my fingers don't get destroyed. It really helps to have a super sharp knife for this part, by the way. Now, once I've got this onion cut down into clean crosshatches, I'm going to grab my knife and come across and chop it perpendicular to the cuts that we just made. About every half inch or so. And that's the traditional culinary school way to get a medium dice on an onion. This culinary school version of an onion dice is pretty good, and it'll definitely teach you to be technically proficient with your knife, but the problem is, it is a technical cut that takes a lot of practice. So I'm going to show you guys an easier version of an onion dice that you've seen me use in a bunch of my videos called the weeknight dice. To do that, I'll grab a peeled half onion with the north and south poles removed, then slice it five to six times parallel to the poles. From there, I'll turn it 90 degrees and chop every half inch, just like I did for the traditional onion dice. And when I get down to the end, I'll push the onion forward to maintain stability, then I'll keep chopping. Next, I'm going to show you how to dice non-onion vegetables. For that, I've got a chunky carrot here, because it's a good vehicle to show off the technique, and more than likely, you're going to need diced carrots sometime in the near future. A quick callout, though, is if you need a perfect medium dice, I would say start with the chunkiest carrot that you can, because obviously, it's very hard to turn a narrow, skinny carrot into a perfect rectangle, or a square. A dice is a square. Now, to dice this, I'll just chop off either end, then cut this carrot in half. Next, I need an even, flat block to cut down into squares, so I'll use my knife to chop just a little bit off of each side of this carrot to kind of plane it into a rectangle. Next, I'll cut this rectangle in half, then I'll cut those halves in half, right down the middle, giving me four uniform batons. Next, I'll turn 90 degrees, and then chop every half inch to three quarters of an inch, or however wide the batons are, and that's a perfect medium dice carrot. It's perfect for soups, or stews, or anytime you need something with right angles. To do a small dice, I'll repeat the same process, but instead of cutting the rectangle in half, I'll cut it into three planks that are a little bit thinner. Once I've got these planked out, I'll cut each one of those planks into three batons that are the same width on all four sides. By the way, this specific dicing technique applies to all large vegetables, not just carrots. Once I've got these batons cut down, I'll turn it 90 degrees, then I'll chop those down into something that resembles a small dice, maybe about a quarter to half of an inch. There's no rules here when it comes to dice size, though. Some French guy in the late 1800s decided what official small, medium, and large dices were, but he's dead, so cut these vegetables to whatever size works for your dish. The next cut that we're gonna look at is mainly a restaurant cut called a brunoise. Think of a brunoise as a micro dice. It's usually about a sixteenth of an inch, so it's really, really small, and it's mainly done to onions or shallots, but any vegetable could be cut into a brunoise. To do the brunoise, I'm gonna slice this shallot about 10 to 12 times crosswise, somewhere in the ballpark of about a sixteenth of an inch. Really close together, basically. Then I'm gonna move the shallot to the edge of my cutting board, just like I did for the onion. Then I'm gonna use the claw grip, and then I'm gonna slide my knife in gently. Let the knife do the work here. And instead of two to three slices top to bottom, I'm gonna do four or five. Once I've got my shallot carved up like this, I'm gonna come back and chop it down very finely, meaning my slices are gonna be super close together. The main way that I've used brunoise in the past in home and professional cooking is in something like a pan sauce. There, you want the flavor of the shallot, the garlic, or the onion, or whatever other thing you brunoise, but you don't necessarily want the texture to stand out, so you want really small pieces that are gonna soften really quickly. The next knife cut that I'm gonna show you guys is one that you've probably heard of before, but it might be something that you might be intimidated to try. It's called the julienne. A julienne is usually about three inches long, and maybe a quarter inch wide, or a half inch. It kinda depends on who's defining it and what vegetable you're cutting. In this part of the video, I'm gonna show you how to julienne an onion first, and then the technique to julienne all other types of vegetables. So to cut this thing, I'm gonna start out with a large red onion, then I'm gonna work my way over the top of the onion, slicing every quarter inch or so. You'll notice that I started my blade on an angle, and then worked back towards more of a perpendicular straight up and down motion. That's to ensure that we don't cross cut the onion layers and end up with weird shaped pieces. And once I'm most of the way through, I'm gonna push the onion forward onto its face, then I'm gonna use the angled chop one more time to match the angle of the onion, and then finish it off with a perpendicular up and down motion, just like I did before. I like to use the julienne cut on onions for stuff like pickled red onions, or coleslaw where you need a long skinny piece of onion to mix in with cabbage, or this is the best way to cut onions for something like French onion soup. They melt a lot faster this way. To julienne other foods, like a carrot, I'm gonna cut it down into two to three inch lengths, then trim off some of the side to create a rectangular block to create some flatness. Then I'm gonna slice those rectangles into planks that are as thin as you feel comfortable with, usually between a quarter and an eighth of an inch. From there, I'm gonna stack two or three of those planks neatly, then I'm gonna cut them into strips. I want these to be as wide as they are tall. I usually like to go for more of a shreddy julienne, because I like to put this type of cut in a salad raw, or use it for a quick pickle, just like I did in my banh mi sandwich video a couple weeks ago. And that is a textbook looking julienne. Quick shoutout to the julienne peeler, though. This is what I actually use to do a julienne at home most of the time. It gives you a little bit more of a shreddy look, which, if that's what you want, is good. But if you want a vegetable that has a little bit more crunch, and a little bit more of that signature julienne look, you definitely want to use a knife. Up next is another nifty knife cut that most home cooks don't know about, but it's widely used in the professional kitchen, and it's called an oblique. To cut a carrot into oblique, I'll chop off the stem end, then I'll cut on a diagonal through the rounded end, diagonally down and across. Then I'll turn the vegetable 45 to 90 degrees, cut again, then rotate, then cut. Each time I cut, I'm looking to break off roughly the same amount of volume of vegetable, but you can be kind of loose with it. Cut, rotate, cut through the previous diagonal, then rotate one more time. When you get down to the tapered end, just adjust your angle a little bit to make sure you're taking off the right amount of vegetable, and there we go. I love this cut for dishes where you want chunky, hardy vegetables, like beef stew or pot roast. For me, cutting obliques is probably the fastest way to get large vegetables broken down into pretty pieces that will cook evenly. To oblique a larger vegetable, like a potato, I'll cut it in half, then cut those halves into quarters, then I'll grab one of the quarters and apply the cut, rotate, well, you know, we'll kind of figure out how to rotate it, then cut through the previous diagonal. Obliquing a potato does take a little bit of creativity, but, you know, you just want angled pieces that are about the same size. Just rotate it and cut it through the previous diagonal. Here I'm cutting a stalk of celery into obliques. Again, since it's not a perfectly round vegetable like a carrot, it's going to require a little bit of jazz on your part, but the process is basically the same. Rotate it, cut it on a diagonal, then cut through that previous diagonal, and then rotate it again. For me, the beauty of the oblique cut is not just that it's super easy and anyone can do it, it's also that the cut looks good. It's rustic and organic, but the sizes are even enough that they will cook evenly, so it's a dope cut. Next, I'm going to show you a quick variation on the oblique called a bias cut. To bias cut a veggie, I'm going to turn my knife at a 45 degree angle to the piece of food and then slice it. For this, I usually like to use the heel end of my knife so that I can get a little bit of this rolling action. Overall, the bias cut can be a pretty useful tool, but I generally only find myself using it for things like celery or scallions for wok-based stir-fry. Up next, we're going to get into a little bit of a rapid fire section where I show you guys some vegetable-specific cuts for stuff like zucchini and tomatoes, and also a few more simple knife techniques that are super useful. But first, I want to thank Lagerstrom Home Goods for sponsoring this video. Hey guys, foodtuber and budding knife entrepreneur Brian Lagerstrom here. Quick question, do you struggle in the kitchen? Are you sick and tired of smushing your food instead of slicing it like a katana? Let me just say, the struggle is over. Introducing the new 8-inch Lagerstrom Chef's Knife from Lagerstrom Home Goods. Sharp enough to slice through a tomato mid-air, this knife is crafted with a razor-sharp edge designed to tackle almost anything from delicate herbs to giant cuts of meat. Before the Lagerstrom Chef's Knife, I couldn't even chop an onion. But now? I'll be waiting for your call, Thomas Keller. And it's durable too, Lauren. Throw it in the dishwasher and forget it. To be serious, I have been developing this knife for over two years now, and I really love it because it combines the form factor of a Japanese Gyuto-style knife with the durability and affordability of some of the standard-issue, rugged, not-fancy-at-all kitchen knives that I used to use when I was working in food service. The metal in this blade is made from a not-too-hard, not-too-soft, premium stainless steel that comes super sharp right out of the box. I picked this blend of steel specifically because it's affordable, durable, and holds its edge for a really long time. Eventually, when it does dull out a little bit, you can kind of just rip it up on a honing rod and bring it right back. This knife is for sale right now over at shop.brianlagerstrom.com for what I think is a super reasonable price of $40 USD. If you guys are interested in this knife today only, if you go over to the link down in the description and use code SHARP10, you'll get 10% off your order. Unfortunately, we're only shipping these things to the US right now. Hopefully that opens up in the future. Click the link in the description and go over to brianlagerstrom.com slash shop and use code SHARP10, you'll get 10% off this knife. Thank you to Lagerstrom Home Goods for sponsoring this video. Up next, we're going to do a really simple technique called a mince. To mince garlic, I'll start by smashing it with the back of my knife. No problem for the Lagerstrom 8-inch. If you started by just chopping the garlic, it would take about two times longer. You gotta smash it first. Then I'll add in a small pinch of salt into the garlic, and then I'll post up the tip of my knife on the cutting board, then use my pointer finger and thumb on the back part of the blade near the bolster, then I'll rock the knife back and forth rigorously. The move is to kind of post up in a posture like this. You want to keep the tip of the knife touching the cutting board, and then you kind of want to just like spasm your elbow up and down. And then you just want to scrape off the garlic after you get about halfway minced, get it back into a pile, and then keep spasming the elbow. The salt really, really helps break down the garlic much faster, by the way. It adds a bit of a coarse texture that kind of just shreds it apart, honestly. That is how you mince garlic. It's really good to know how to do this with a knife when you don't have something like a microplane, a box grater, or a garlic press to break this stuff down. But you really should have one or all three of those tools. A box grater is great for mincing onions, a microplane is great for mincing ginger or garlic, and a garlic press obviously is great for mincing garlic. Up next is a restaurant trick that I use to cut a ton of cherry tomatoes extremely quickly. Back when I was the chef of a pizza restaurant slash cafe slash bread bakery, we used to run this heirloom tomato pizza every Friday and Saturday night during the summer. We would go to the farmer's market basically and buy 40 pints of cherry tomatoes to put on top of 40 or 50 of these pizzas, and we would have to cut them all by hand. Usually the old-fashioned way, where you grab one cherry tomato and cut it in half. Then you grab another cherry tomato and you cut it in half. Then one day we were prepping and this cook named Cowboy came by and was like, hey man, try it this way. He basically took two deli containers and put a bunch of tomatoes in the middle and then sliced 10 tomatoes at one time. This of course blew my frickin' mind because at the time I was spending like two hours per day cutting 40 pints of cherry tomatoes, and with this technique I could cut all those tomatoes in like 15 minutes. So again, to do this method you'll take a couple of takeout deli lids, or something that is like this that has a rim around the outside. Then you'll fill it with as many cherry tomatoes as you can, pop on the second lid, making sure that the rim is facing down. Then slide my knife in through the side and saw back and forth to very gently break through the tomato skins. Just don't press too hard because you'll squish them. And that's how you cut a bunch of cherry tomatoes at one time. Up next I'm gonna show you guys how to cut a zucchini. First let me just say that if you don't know how to cut a zucchini properly, it's gonna be very hard to actually cook it properly. Zucchinis are full of water and when you cook them that water evaporates creating steam which leads to most of the time mushy zucchini. The good news is most of that water is removable with the proper knife skill. To cut this thing I'm gonna remove the two ends, then I'm gonna cut the zucchini in half top to bottom, then I'm gonna cut those halves in half giving me four long pieces. See that middle part? That's where the seeds are and that's where all the water is. So we gotta lose those. Next I'm gonna take one of my strips, then carefully slide my knife in about half way through at a right angle and then just zip out that seed line. From there I'm gonna stack my deseeded zucchini strips, turn 90 degrees and chop down into pieces that are about an inch wide. This method is all killer, no filler. It gives you just the flesh. Up next I'm gonna show you guys how to properly cut a bell pepper. First I'll drop the pepper on it's side and nip off a little bit of the bottom to give me a more stable base to start cutting from. Next I'll stand the pepper up right, then come back and carefully slice the sides off into long planks. This method keeps all of the seeds in the core intact so you don't need to worry about cutting those out later on. Okay once the sides and bottom are cut off like this I need to remove the white pith in the middle. So to get rid of that white ribby stuff I'm gonna slide the bell pepper back to the edge of my cutting board, then I'm gonna very very carefully slide my knife under it, getting under a little bit of that cellular white stuff as well. Halfway through I'm gonna move my left hand over to the other side of the pepper to keep it out of harms way, then I'll keep on moving my knife until the rib slides out. From here I'll flip my plank skin side up and then pull my knife back towards me to cut it down into a julienne style strip. I like to cut it skin side up because in my experience when I cut skin side down even the sharpest of knives don't always cut through the skin. If you guys wanted to dice the peppers just julienne them slightly wider, then turn 90 degrees and run your knife back through the other way to get a nice half inch dice like this. That's how you execute the most basic knife skills that I think all home cooks should know. If you guys think this knife looks cool and you want to give it a try I'm gonna throw a link down in the description to exactly where you can get one. As always guys thank you so much for your time and attention, thank you for sticking around to the end of the video, thank you for buying a knife, and I'll see you next time. Do you struggle in the kitchen? Squash your tomatoes. Squash! Smoosh! Hey guys, Brian Lagerstrom here, just wanted to ask you a quick question. Smoosh! Before the Lagerstrom Chef's Knife, I couldn't even chop an onion. Smoosh! Hold on, I gotta get it out of me. Slice! Forget it. It's forgotten. Forget it. Throw it in the dishwasher. Forget it. Introducing the new 8 inch Lagerstrom Chef's Knife from Lagerstrom Home Goods.