On my 31 comes before 32 list, I set out to take a knife skills class. A few weeks ago, I was puttering around the internet looking for classes and found an Essential Knife Skills class at my local Sur La Table! After all the Thanksgiving preparations & the vacation away with family (don’t get me started on how much energy was put into packing up this small family of three!) I decided to treat myself to a class on a Monday night, all by myself! Have I ever told you that I find chopping food to be fun and relaxing? Is that weird?
When I got into the “class room” there were 20 stations set up for the students. At the front of the class was a massive island full of carrots, peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, celery and spinach…all waiting to be cut. There was a huge angled mirror hanging from the ceiling so people in the back could watch our instructor cutting. I think there was also a TV, but I was pretty close so I didn’t even look at it. The instructor stood right behind that mega chopping block at the left hand side of the photo.
The instructor started off by saying,
“Tonight we are going to breakdown what they teach in the first week of culinary school, but we’ll do it in 2 hours.”
Whoa. Deep breath.
Here’s my station. We each got a chef’s knife, a towel to clean our knife, an apron, a packet of knifey information, a nice cutting board and a big bowl to put all of our cut up food scraps in. I left my real camera in my purse, as I had no room on my station. I snapped photos with my cellphone. I think that’s allowed?
No one said anything…but I did get a few weird looks from my instructor.
First we learned how to properly dice potatoes & julienne carrots.
We practiced working on a rhythm with our cuts on celery & then we mastered the perfect chiffonade.
We learned how to properly cut a bell pepper & finely mince a clove of garlic. Garlic presses are frowned upon in the kitchen because they don’t remove the green sprout in the center of the garlic. This little green thing makes garlic very bitter! Garlic tastes best when it’s removed! You can only do that by hand. Fun fact!
I also learned that you’re supposed to position your knife at the top of your cutting board with the blade away from you when it’s not in use. Refer to the bell pepper picture for proper placement.
Accidents happen in the kitchen. It’s best to avoid them. I need to remember this.
My instructor laughed at how many people use a tomato to see how sharp their knife is.
I’m not sure why it’s funny. I found out my knife was pretty damn sharp with my tomato! But hey, he’s a professional with mad knife skillz and an artillery that rivals Dexter’s kill bag. So I’m totally shutting up about that.
This is the proper way to hold a knife when you’re cutting. It’s weird at first, but I’m totally used to it now!
You shouldn’t feel any strain in your fingers when you’re holding a knife this way.
You also need to tuck in your fingers that are holding the item to be chopped. You’ll avoid cutting flesh this way.
And here’s the orange segmenting part. I’ve done this before..You better believe I ate that orange!
Oh…the onion chopping…a room of 20 people chopping onions? Not pretty. The lady next to me had to walk out of the room from tearing up so much. A guy ended up breaking a glass as a result. CHAOS of ONIONS!
AHHH!
Definitely a good idea to save this for the end of the class.
I learned that if you are a contact lens wearer (which I’m not) it’s important to wear goggles while cutting an onion because the sulfur can get stuck in your contact lenses and make your life a living hell for a few hours. This is why people in the army wear glasses instead of contacts. Another instructor anecdote!
I got a name tag on my apron! I like the handwriting of the instructor’s assistant.
I like how she connected the c & y. That “a” is pretty cute too.
I’m a nerd for handwriting.
Overall it was a fun experience. I wish I could have practiced with more stuff in the actual class. We only got one of each thing to chop up and the pace was kind of fast. I learned a great deal about knife sharpening and built my confidence on holding a knife properly. You will never catch me holding a knife the wrong way again!
Sur la Table had lots of information about knives & gave a 10% discount to the students.
We took a break to look at all the knives that they had in their store. The instructor answered a lot of questions & showed us the differences between the knives they sold.
If I didn’t already have a good set of knives at home, the discount would have been useful!
What else did I learn??
Practice makes perfect!
