Knife Skills

Taking part in the Kitchen Cure? This would be a great week to learn how to sharpen your knives, especially given all the cooking you’ll be doing in the final three weeks. Even if you’re not one of the 800-plus Cure-takers, my guess is your knives haven’t been sharpened lately, if ever. You’ll need a sharpening stone (or bench stone) for sharpening and a sharpening steel (or rod) for honing.

Chopping chocolate for things like brownies and fudge was always one of our least favorite kitchen tasks. That is, until a pastry chef friend suggested we try using a serrated bread knife!Chocolate is naturally quite brittle and will fragment under pressure. The grooved “teeth” on a serrated knife are like many tiny wedges pushing into the chocolate and getting it to fragment in several places at once.

Once you’ve gone to all the trouble of sharpening your knife, the next step is keeping that way! This is easy to do and only takes a few seconds. Here’s how…As you use your knife, the sharp edge will gradually start to curl under. When you sharpen your knife on a steel, you’re actually just straightening the edge back out again. (This is as opposed to sharpening your knife on a whetstone, where metal is being removed to form a sharper edge.

When it comes right down to it, the best way to hold your chef’s knife is the way that feels the most comfortable to you.But if you’re looking for a little more control and speed in your cutting, here’s how!With your thumb and first finger, pinch the blade of your knife where it runs into the handle.Alternatively, you can wrap all four fingers around the handle with your thumb touching the heel of the blade.