How to cut vegetables: Video and Guide
Good knife skills are a combination of knowledge and practice, the knowledge of how to hold and move a knife along with what types of knives are best to use on the types of foods you want to cut. Almost everyone sooner or later has to cook their own food, and that means there is no escape from using the knife. The more you know how to use it the safer your fingers are going to be.
If you like to eat healthy, vegetables are a welcome addition to any persons diet. Living a healthy and happy life in a western country can be is almost impossible when fast food like hamburgers are cheaper than the average veggie. But if you want to live a healthier lifestyle you have to make the hard choices of staying away from fast food, and lean more towards home cooked meals with fresh vegetables.
Naturally, just about every recipe begins with a block of instructions: first, cut up a chicken, slice an onion, mince or dice some garlic, tomatoes and so on. Yet so many people or even cooks know the basic knife skills to safely and effectively cut a chicken. Below we added a video to show you some of the basics with some common vegetables You will learn how to chop green onions, carrots, mushrooms, and zucchini. We also took the liberty to add a PDF download to show you some of the basics knife handling skills from cooksillustrated.com (download here).
The two options above are free, the next one is not but it is cheap. You may want to check out Chef Peter Hertzmann’s tutorial on how to cut in the kitchen includes illustrations and instructions for 20 different vegetables most commonly found in French recipes. This comprehensive guide has over 750 step-by-step illustrations for right- and left-handed cooks which are all illustrated from the point of view of the person using the knife.
The book covers all aspects of cutting from the basics to advanced techniques from julienning ginger, shaving fennel, filleting a trout to carving a turkey for both the right handed and the left handed cook. He Chef Peter even explains how knives cut and the different types with all their uses. The tutorial can be purchased from Amazon.com for $19.77 here, which is on sale for now saving you $10.
There are 16 videos in this series:, enjoy.
