Alex Chao

2/22/16

ENG 1121

Personal Narrative Essay Final Draft

                                                 The Difficulties of Knife Skills

            “First knife skills then knowing how to control heat. Most important is choosing the right product.. the rest is simple.” Justin Quek. This quote explains how working in a kitchen using knife skills and different techniques. My difficulties in a kitchen is learning the basic knife skills. Not only culinary is stressful but also it helps me to procure verbal skills like knife cuts, how to hold a knife and learning how to cut properly.  

            The first difficulties is learning the basic knife skills and cuts. Working in a restaurant knife skills are important because you want to cook all the food at the same time for example if your cooking chicken one piece of chicken that you cut is bigger than the other it will cook different times. Another reason why knife skill is important because it helps reduce waste while they are cutting vegetables or any other product. Reduce waste can be left to make stocks. The basic knife cuts are chopping, mincing, julienne, Batonnet, different types of dices which includes Brunoise, Small dice, medium dice and large dice. Also there is a cut that is called chiffonade. The knife cuts have different sizes chopping is like cutting up foods into small bits and they will cook evenly, mincing is a very small cut that is useful and it gives flavor throughout the dish, a julienne cut is also called a “match stick” and the measurement is 1/8*1/8*2, a batonnet cut is like a French fries the measurements are 1/4*1/4*2inches cubed and many more knife cuts.          

The second difficulties is how to hold a knife properly. A proper way to hold a knife is point facing down by your side if you are walking to another place. If you are holding a chef knife you want to bring your hand up so your thumb and pointing finger are higher up on the handle of the knife. If your knife drops on the floor never catch it step away and let it fall on the floor then pick it up as the same procedure as I stated before.

            The last difficulties is learning how to cut properly. There are different ways of how to cut properly is holding the food steady and curling your fingers into a claw and tucking your knuckles underneath. Place the tip of the blade against the cutting board with the flat of the blade resting against your knuckles. While cutting you should do the rocking motion and the knuckle of the other hand that is holding the food will help not to prevent from cutting yourself.

            People think culinary is stressful but they need to learn different knife skills and many more other skills pertaining in the culinary field. An ideal world for me is when people should be in a peaceful, quiet and should help each other when they are struggling with their knife skills.