One of the essential elements in cooking is knowing how to prepare your food. Knowing how to make proper cuts with the correct technique and style matters.
Properly handling your knives and cutting your food in the correct manner are essential to good cooking. Along with that comes tidiness and the ability to keep things uniform as you go along. With this knowledge at your disposal, you’ll know what the four basic knife skills to know are anytime you’re called to cook or instruct someone on the art of cooking.
Dice
For dicing, look to the potato. This is the best ingredient with which to practice this cutting skill. You’ll want to simply make the most uniform and symmetrical cubes you can. Then, you can practice making them in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Once you have mastered this, you have successfully learned how to dice.
Mince
Mincing is an artful skill. Using herbs or nuts, practice making small, nonuniform cuts over and over again, as finely as you can make them. It may seem elementary, but you’ll use this skill for many dishes, so knowing how to do it well will come in handy.
Julienne
This knife skill, often called batonnet—which in French means “small stick”—produces exactly that. You’ll want to use either carrots or potatoes for practice, slicing them vertically into long strips that resemble matchsticks or shoestrings. Again, practice uniformity, and you’ll have learned how to successfully julienne your vegetables.
Chiffonade
This is a unique skill to have, and you’ll mainly work with herbs and leafy vegetables when practicing this. Take your herb or leaf and roll it up into a cylinder. Then, turning the roll horizontally, slice it into medallions. The result will be long strips that you’ll use mainly for things such as adding basil to a Caprese salad.
No matter what you decide to create, make it a point to always clean up after yourself. Clean as you go, and you’ll never have a mess. This goes for your hands and your food, too. Before you prepare anything, make sure you’re working with a clean workstation, and never forget to properly clean your fruit and vegetables.
Understanding the four basic knife skills to know is only a matter of repetition with careful practice so that you learn the correct form. If you practice repeatedly, you’ll master these skills over time, and then cooking will become much more enjoyable. Because they’re such essential skills, you can’t avoid them if you want to cook, so make sure to learn them and learn them well.
