Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, May 07, 2024 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

I have an essential tremor which has become worse the last five years. Any extra tips for knife skills other than the knight's gloves, which are very awkward to wear?

— Janet Hartje

Answer:

So I'm guessing, uh, night gloves are like the, the, uh, the cut gloves such as a very standard kind of thing in the industry. Uh, those are great. Um, but if you're, you don't really feel comfortable wearing those, there are a lot of other options you can actually do to, um, really, you know, help out with cutting in the kitchen. Um, most of the suggestions I would actually have would actually not have been holding a knife. Uh, it would be looking at some machinery. Um, I'm gonna put a link here, uh, for one tool in particular that you can buy, and it is, um, basically a tool that, um, you know, you can put different things onto and it will chop them up for you so it'll, uh, dice them. It works like a mandolin as well to slice, but if you do have a tremor, shaking your hand might not be the best, but you can use that glove in the hand that you're working with a mandolin as well to be able to keep your hand safe. Um, the other recommendation I would be, uh, recommend is a food processor. A lot of food processors have a built-in disc that goes in the top that will actually slice things, right? So if you do something like a zucchini, you can put the zucchini in the top of the food processor and the disc will be spinning and it has a blade and it cuts it, so it chops it into even size, you know, slices, uh, depending on your use case, you know, um, like if you're doing slices, uh, that's perfect. But something like the other thing that the link for the vegetable chopper might actually be a, a good use for that as well, or a combination of the two. So those are probably the best, uh, recommendations for, you know, if you don't have the, the steady hands as well, um, to be able to, you know, use a knife. Any you're uncomfortable using a cut glove. Um, I would switch to something like those, the, the machinery that can actually help to, um, you know, make your job a little easier. Now, those little vegetable choppers not very expensive. They're usually about $20. And there are a variety. This is just the first one that came up, um, on a search. There are a lot of different kinds of them. Um, the food processor could be a little bit more expensive, so you might want to start with the, you know, the vegetable chopper and then, um, see how that works for you.

Links:

Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com