Knife skills

Good knife skills are absolutely essential to being a good cook.  Knife skills are at once:

1.  The most important (in my opinion) physical skill in the kitchen, EASILY
2.  The most daunting thing to most people who are afraid to cook
3.  Quite easily improved in a short amount of time.

I wouldn't dare try to describe how you should be using your knife in a blog; there are numerous other outlets where you can watch tutorial videos.  I know there are some at foodnetwork.com, and I'd bet you could find some on YouTube.  If you can find it, there's an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown goes over the basics of teaching children to cook.  Besides showing how to use a knife, he covers some safety issues as well.

More specifically, I refer to knife skills as more than just cutting stuff up.  Yes, sometimes you just want to chop something into smaller pieces.  But most times, precise cuts are desired, and yes, it does affect the final product.

For example, when you are dicing vegetables (cutting into small cubes), the aim is to have all the pieces the same size.  This promotes even cooking: each piece gets cooked to the same level of doneness.  You also want to avoid having pieces being larger than bite size, or to be too large a chunk of something in comparison to the other pieces.  For example, an overly big piece of bacon may make that particular mouthful of food too salty or too fatty.

Other times, the precision of your cuts affects the way your dish looks.  It may not necessarily affect the overall flavor, but we also eat with our eyes.  Julienned vegetables or herbs look sloppy if the pieces vary greatly in size.

But as I mentioned above, knife skills get honed pretty quickly.  Like everything else in life, it helps that you have the confidence that you will improve, and trust that your effort will be worth the investment in time.  Once you feel that cutting up a bunch of ingredients is not a big deal, you'll be surprised at how much more you're willing to cook.

I know some people see a recipe and get discouraged when they see a laundry list of vegetables that need to be broken down.  But I actually enjoy doing that stuff - I find all that slicing, dicing, and julienning quite relaxing, almost meditative.

Once you've conquered your fear of doing knife work, so many things open up.  All the aromatics - onions, garlic, celery, peppers - they will impart their flavors so much better with quality knife work.  Vegetables in a stir fry will cook more evenly, and can even look prettier because of the cook's skill with a knife.  And through the understanding of knife cuts, you can manipulate the texture of your foods - get just the right amount of crunch in that very same stir fry.

As I mentioned in a previous post, you don't need no stinkin' Slap Chop; it is imprecise and a waste of money.  Vince mentions how easy it is to clean.  There is NO WAY that it's easier to clean than a knife.

Sauté vs. sweat

One of the ways where the level of heat makes a difference is when sauté or sweat vegetables. Your goal is different in the two techniques. It is largely a matter of being aware of the amount of heat you're using.

When you sauté vegetables, you use a higher level of heat. Some form of fat - oil, lard, butter, or some combination thereof - is used to "hold" heat to transfer to the vegetables. The flat surface of the pan cannot touch all the nooks and grooves of the vegetables (imagine the shape of a broccoli floret), thus, the fat that coats the veggies carries heat to cook them. The point of using high heat is to cook quickly, and keep as much of the flavor in the vegetables as possible. After sautéing, the veggies are pretty much a finished product. You may toss them in some kind of sauce or other ingredients, but not much else.

But sometimes, you actually want to sweat your veggies. The goal of sweating is to draw liquid out of the vegetables, pulling out their flavor. This is done over lower heat, with a little fat, and a little salt added. The salt is essential, as it is hygroscopic - it attracts water. Thus, the moisture in the veggies is drawn out like a magnet by the salt. The low heat is important, as higher heat will seal the moisture in. Unlike a sauté, sweating is usually an intermediary step. For example, you might want to be drawing the flavor out of veggies to make a broth for a soup.

Tools of the trade

Here are what I consider to be the most important tools of a cook.

5. Your cookware. The quality of your pots and pans will affect the quality of the food you produce. But just as importantly, you need to know when to use what type of pot.

4. The knobs on your stove. They are like dimmer switches, not toggle switches. That is, they aren't just on and off; they run from low to medium to high. Understanding when to use high heat or low heat is crucial to getting good results.

3. Your knives. You don't need no stinkin' Slap Chop (sorry Vince). And if you don't already have cutlery, don't run off to Wal-Mart and buy a set of ten. Hell, don't run off to Williams-Sonoma to get a set of ten. For most home cooks, you can get by with three or four knives. Invest in a good chef's knife, definitely.  Then consider adding a paring knife, a filleting knife, and maybe a bread knife (assuming you're doing primarily western-style cooking). You can really make do with just the chef's knife for most of what you do.  And while you're at it, get a sharpening stone and a honing steel.

2. and 1. Your nose and your tongue. They will tell you when things are ready, or ready for the next step. Nuts are toasted when you can smell the oils released by the heat. Also, taste your food before serving your guests. Is it properly seasoned? If not, fix it before serving it!

Besides these five things, your experience is invaluable. It's just like anything else - dancing, skiing, doing trigonometry - the more you do it, the easier it is for you to figure out the best course of action. Eventually, you'll come to understand what tastes good with what, what to add when something doesn't quite taste right, and when to turn a steak to achieve the desired level of doneness.

Preface

This is my own perspective on cooking. I don't mean to say that this the way you, or anyone, should cook. I am completely open to hearing your opinions on what I say, especially if you disagree with me. Thus, I welcome feedback of all types. I am hoping that we can all come to enjoy cooking more, and learn from each other.

I hope to write an entry every day, but please understand if time commitments or plain lack of subject matter prevent me from doing so. But again, in the spirit of collaboration, if you have a specific topic you'd like to bring up, feel free to leave a comment suggesting it!