[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm Kate Chappell.
And I'm here with USU Extension and Food $ense
to do some demonstrations.
This one is all about knives.
The most common knife you'll encounter
is a French knife or a chef's knife.
There is one way to hold it.
This is not the right way.
This is not the right way unless you're
murdering people like Freddy.
To hold it correctly, you want to pinch between your finger
and thumb here.
Then these three fingers wrap around the blade.
You want to rock it on the curb of the blade.
And to cut something, set it on your board, cut down.
You want to use a rocking motion to cut.
You're still moving the knife backwards and forwards.
And this does take practice.
This is not something anyone is born knowing.
The other knife you'll see a lot of
is a smaller knife called a paring knife.
Typically, it's used for trimming
the ends of vegetables.
And you hold it a little bit differently.
You don't want to use the same technique because you'll
cut the end of your finger off.
And you can trim the ends off of vegetables
and do minor touch-up things with a paring knife.
You want to store them in a block,
like this, or in a drawer.
But if they're in a drawer, they do need a case on them
because you don't want your blades--
whoops.
You don't want your blades banging into each other
and making your knives dull.
So the correct way to slice around vegetables
are to make them not round because you
don't want it rolling away.
And you don't want it rolling.
So you get your thumb instead.
So once you make it not round, hold your knife again,
like you're supposed to.
Your fingers need to be curled into a claw.
And you want the blade of the knife
resting against the flat part of your finger.
And then using the same rocking motion, the whole blade,
you slice.
Each time you move your fingers back,
that determines how wide of a slice you're going to make.
Consistency is key when slicing things
because they will cook all at the same time
if they're all the same size.
So if you have little carrots and big carrots,
this one will be done a lot sooner than this one.
So we want to maintain all the same size when we're slicing.
Other vegetables, you can chop instead of slice.
So when you want a more rough shape,
put this hand on top of the knife.
Use that same rocking motion.
Follow the shape of the blade.
And you can chop it into a much more rough shape.
It's not as uniform.
But depending on what you're doing,
this might be what you want.
When you're done, you scrape it into a pile,
put it in your dish, move to the next ingredient.
Onions are a little bit tricky because they
have so many layers and they also have appeal.
So I get asked this all the time and I'm sure you're wondering,
is there any way to not cry when you're cutting an onion?
And the answer is no.
There's a lot of oil here near the roots
that will release into the air as you cut your onion.
So the best way to go about it to avoid
crying is to have a sharp knife and to cut
fast because, I'm wearing ski goggles, doesn't work.
Cutting underwater isn't really functional for getting
good, delicious onions.
I'm going to cut it in half.
Remove the paper.
I like to leave the root intact.
You can see just a little bit here.
That will hold your layers together.
You won't be chasing them all over the cutting board.
This doesn't taste good.
We'll discard that.
Then you want to follow the lines of the onion
with your knife.
And you don't want to cut all the way through to the end.
You leave this here as an anchor.
Then you turn it sideways.
A lot of people cut one slice here.
I don't think that's necessary because the layers are
small enough.
So as you cut, then you end up with
a nice little diced onions, easy for sauteing,
easy for putting into fillings.
A lot of people worry when they find bell peppers in the recipe
and they don't know how to cut them.
The easiest way I found is to slice off the top,
remove the seeds in one bunch, and remove
this little pithy, spongy part.
It doesn't taste very good.
It's usually bitter.
And then, once again, cut it in half so it's not round.
For julienne, which are the little sticks
you see in stir fries and salads and things
like that, same thing.
You're using the knife against the flat edge of your finger,
holding the pepper securely, and rocking
that knife back and forth using as much of the blade
as you can.
If you notice a lot this flavor here, you can cut it out.
But you don't want to discard the whole strip
because that's a lot of pepper.
That's edible.
Sometimes in a recipe you'll encounter instructions
like small dice or medium dice.
And there are measurements for those.
Once again, consistency is the key.
So take your round potato.
Make it flat.
If you want a medium dice, you're
going to cut a big plank, like this.
Then you're going to cut it in two sticks that
are the same width, as your potato is high.
If you want to measure, you can use your extra potato.
Then you know they're all the same height, the same width.
You can turn your potato sideways.
And there you have a medium dice.
So if you have medium dice, you'll
have all potatoes cut the same size.
Approximately, they'll cook about the same time.
Same thing is true for small dice.
You just cut a smaller plank if you
have to cut a lot of potatoes, you can stack them into layers
and then cut your sticks.
Then turn it sideways again.
Cut your cubes.
And you have a small dice.
You can go even smaller.
I wouldn't recommend it with a potato but other vegetables
for salads and things.
And there are your dices.
When you're cutting fresh herbs, they're almost all the same.
You want to remove the leaves from the stem.
The stems are useful for things like stalks and soups
for adding flavor when you don't want to add
the leaves until the end.
So if you have a recipe that calls
for parsley or cilantro or Rosemary,
it's all the same procedure.
Remove the delicious green leaves.
Save the stems for use elsewhere.
When you're mincing or chopping parsley,
you kind of want to ball it up.
Same knife procedure, hold your knife
the same way, knuckles against the edge of the blade.
And you just want to use that rocking motion
and get good, clean cuts through your leaves.
Gather them all up again.
Turn them.
And go again.
The second time, sometimes your little pile falls down.
You can put your hand up here, like a chopping motion.
But you're still rocking that knife.
You're still using that motion to get good small bits
because you don't want to have somebody over for dinner
and they get a big leaf of parsley stuck in their teeth.
So you want to make sure you chop it up nice and small.
It'll get really fragrant, which is one of the things that
makes cooking fun.
So there you have minced herbs.
It works with pretty much every herb, all the leafy herbs,
for sure--
chives, Rosemary, parsley, cilantro,
oregano for pizza sauce and stew.
So there you go.