Knowledge Base > Eric Wynkoop - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
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Eric Wynkoop - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
This event was on
Tuesday, June 18, 2024 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern
Join Chef Eric Wynkoop 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 co… Read More.
Question:
![Catherine H](https://d1c8xu194km6ge.cloudfront.net/avatars/1508482/1719879372-IMG_0006_thumbnail.jpeg)
When practicing good knife skills, it seems there is a lot of food waste. How can I balance the two?
— Catherine Hardie
Answer:
You just wanna think about how you will use the scraps. Um, the byproduct of, um, of knife cuts, knife skills, and I'm gonna go back to what I talked about just a few minutes ago, and that is when you're practicing for, first of all, our graded assignments, yes, uh, we want you to create a, a dice or a, a nice, long, skinny thing that has 90 degree edges, uh, which means there's gonna be a lot of trim waste that's generated, uh, in, in that case, figure out how you're gonna use it. This, it can go into a stew, into a soup. Um, you can make, uh, uh, vegetable pancakes, um, you know, or something else, um, that, uh, you might come upon here. And, um, uh, now beyond our graded assignments, right? Uh, you might decide that, oh, hey, you know, um, for my routine daily cooking, um, I'm okay with having rounded edges on my cut pieces. So you can eliminate any of the trim waste by just cutting things up into approximately a large dice, or a medium dice, or a small dice, or a brunoise, uh, and then incorporating those things into your dishes, even though they are not exactly a cube, for example. Okay? Totally up to you. Um, now you might also decide that, okay, on occasion when I make a special meal, you know, around this holiday or when this guest comes over, I will spend some extra time and really make those cuts look sharp, um, so that they've finished dish looks really eye appealing, in which case you will have some trim waste, and, uh, you just need to think about how you'll utilize those items. Okay? And again, soups and stews are easy. Um, vegetable pancakes are another easy way to do that, you know, a savory pancake. Um, and then, uh, they can go into anything else that you might make like a, like a bean dish or some sort of a casserole.
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