Question
Michelle White
Other than knife cuts, what foundational skills would you recommend to drill or practice repeatedly rather than learn and practice less frequently?
Answer
Ideally, you would practice any skill with some frequency in order to deepen your understanding quicker, and then also broaden your understanding of application faster, okay? And so let me explain. As we cook at home, our frequency of cooking is relatively low. We might cook once or twice or three times a day, and so we're using a knife, let's say, three times a day. And maybe we're sautéing one of those times and roasting one of those times and steaming another time during the day. So we get to do those cooking methods once per day. That's a pretty low frequency. Okay? Now, if we shift and just imagine a restaurant that is going to serve 100 people or 500 people for a dinner shift. As a cook, if you're prepping for any of those menu items in that scenario, then you're going to be preparing a much larger quantity. You're going to be doing this every single day at this large quantity. Excuse me. And as you're cooking these dishes, maybe that same sautéed dish is ordered 50 times, or maybe you're grilling a steak 40 times every night. The frequency of your practice is much higher, and that's one reason why a cook at a restaurant or in some other larger volume commercial kitchen setting is going to be increasing their knowledge and skill development at a much faster pace. So in short, they are practicing everything much quicker. Okay, so if we shift back to the home kitchen, while knife skills are certainly helpful with most everything we prep, focus on the other things like cooking methods or just salad dressing production techniques that you do most frequently or that you wish to do most frequently with ease. And then practice those things. Maybe you'll eat those things more frequently for a period of time as you develop your skills and deepen your knowledge, and then you can take a break and then feel more comfortable picking it up again After a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Okay? So do try to incorporate repetition wherever you can. And this is why I encourage everybody to avoid, to the best of your ability, any processed foods in the kitchen. And to just push yourself to produce things. Okay? Whether it's a fruit puree that's used as a sweetener in a dressing that goes on a salad. Right? So you might be two or three steps removed from that final dish that you consume, but you're preparing this base ingredient that goes into a component of that dish. And so just push yourself to prepare everything, and your skills will ramp up just as quickly as they can. Okay, I hope that's helpful. And again, I hope you can take that as a word of encouragement to just get in there and process your food. You're going to learn so much about ingredients and how things are grown and places of origin and other processing stages of an ingredient before it reaches the grocery store or your kitchen. Okay, it really is helpful. Thank you.
