Kitchen Knives & Knife Cuts

Kitchen knives are one of the most important tools in cooking. This lesson will introduce you to the key knives you need to have in your culinary knife set, what they are used for in the kitchen and some of the key characteristics to look for when selecting the best kitchen knives.

This cooking school lesson will also highlight the important things to look for when buying one of the most important knives, the chef’s knife.

Everything you do in the kitchen starts with the knife. Therefore, learning some key foundational knife skills should be the very first thing you do in the Rouxbe Cooking School.

In this cooking school lesson, you will learn the most important and most efficient cutting technique with the chef's knife – the rolling technique. This lesson will also look at how to hold the chef’s knife properly, knife safety and how to keep your chef's knife sharp through honing.

Ingredients come in many shapes and sizes, requiring different approaches to how you cut or process them. Although there are many fancy terms describing the various types of knife cuts, they all are forms of slicing.

This lesson, therefore, focuses on slicing as one of the main knife skills you need to master. The lesson reviews how to best stabilize ingredients, anchor the knife and keep your hands safe when using a chef's knife.

A sharp chef’s knife is a must in the kitchen. Not only is a sharp knife much safer, it makes cooking much more enjoyable and more efficient. By learning how to sharpen your own knife, with your own hands, you will develop a more trusted relationship with your knife and begin to feel even more comfortable with it.

In this lesson, we are going to focus on knife sharpening for the most commonly-used knife – the chef’s knife. However, the sharpening techniques you learn here can be applied to most other knives in your knife set.

Honing alone cannot sharpen a dull knife; it can only maintain a sharp edge. Sharpening on a whetstone will be required, if you do not hone your knife on a regular basis.

This instructional cooking video on The Rolling Technique, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
Handling a Chef's Knife.

This instructional cooking video on Positioning Your Guide Hand , is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
Handling a Chef's Knife.

This instructional cooking video on Slicing and Dicing, is part of the Rouxbe Cooking School.

This cooking video is taken from the lesson on
How to Cut Using a Chef's Knife.