— Sonia Linkfield

As a home cook and you know as a professional out there as well knife skills are really foundational really a central to what we do each day. And number one, you know practice is going to be in order and I'm gonna share a couple of a couple of comments a couple of tips with you, but I want to preface this by saying that again, you know have patience with yourself and put in the time on the knife by cutting many many different things and paying attention to your your body positioning your posture. You know the way that you're Hand in wrist and knife and and arm or aligned in certain ways to be comfortable and to be safe. It's not uncommon for folks that are on their feet doing long hours of prep work to start to develop aches and pains anywhere from your head to your toes. I mean, everything's connected of course and in knife skills, we'll put stress on all parts of your body places that you might not even expect. And so, you know, my my first word is always a word of safety and and self-awareness. now when it comes to guide fingers and and knives if you got your guide finger, we ask that you tuck your fingertips so that they are out of the way of the knife which leaves Knuckles exposed and your knife blade should come in contact with Your knuckle now which knuckle you choose is up to you A lot of times, you know, our middle finger is the longest one so that knuckle sticks out that's most convenient for contact with the knife. But there are times when we position our hands or our body in different ways and we might choose to use a different knuckle. Sometimes it's a smaller item or what have you and so it's also necessary to make changes. Okay, but basically tuck your fingertips bring your knife in and and that's gonna be your guide generally speaking if this is the height of your blade then we try to keep the the blade movement pretty tight and up against a knuckle so we know where the knife is if you're cutting taller items and you have to move your knife up and out of the way then please be careful as you bring it back down and align it with your knuckle. It's but uncommon to catch the knuckle coming down, okay, and probably nearly all of this may experience that at some point or another just have a box of mandates Within Reach. Okay. I mean, otherwise as you align the knife with the guide knuckle and make your slice pushing down and forward, then you're going to inch back slightly. With the guide hand and then ratchet your your blade over and make contact with your knuckle again and make that downward and forward slicing action. Okay, and that's the basic cycle and that is to be repeated As you move down that item that you're cutting slowly inching your guide hand backwards. Okay, and it takes practice knife skill development is perhaps the most technical of or certainly, you know, one of the most technical skill development areas in the kitchen and you know, when I worked on ground at culinary schools with many many people that aspired to work in professional kitchens that was probably the most challenging area of development. And so I passed that on to you to give you some perspective. It takes a lot of time, you know throughout a Rouxbe three month or six month or nine month course. You're probably still going to have a lot more development to do. Okay. And as you start out number one focus on slow methodical accurate Cuts aligning your This way and this way to achieve accuracy IE the 90 degree cuts that will give you good looking finished product. Okay, and then as you develop your accuracy start to add speed understanding that with increased speed you'll get decreased accuracy so find some balance in there that's going to work for you. Okay for the assignments that you hand into us try to slow it down and provide to us the best most accurate work that you can okay, but again in your day-to-day routine of cooking you're gonna find that balance between the speed of getting the work done and the accuracy of of cooking. Okay, and you have fun with it. It's a long journey and just notice the the progress over larger chunks of time. Okay.