kitchen knife brands
hello, welcome! i'm chris tavano and this is another episode of tundra restaurantsupply do-it-yourself knife know-how. today we're in the kitchen of the bar lillyat the broker inn in boulder. so today we're going to talk about knife essentialsin the kitchen. we've got a wide range of your honing rod, your slicing knife, a serrated bread knife, a santoku, or a chef's knife, we've got both,
as well as a paring knife. we're going to start off with a chef knifeand a santoku knife and talk about the differences within them. we're using some quality cutting surfaces, an nsf certified plastic polyurethane cuttingboard or a nice wood butcher's block that is oiledand cured for food safety. briefly i want to talk about the anatomy ofa knife that every blade and every knife has is thetip, the blade itself,
as well as the cutting edge which goes into the heel which goes to thebolster, easier to see on here, which goes into the tang, and the tang is something that goes throughoutthe handle. the difference with the tang between the forgedand stamped models, the best way to think about that is a stampedmodel is much like a license plate manufacturer whereas the forged is much like a blacksmith.
this is probably the most versatile knifein any kitchen could be used for many purposes especially if you are short on any other kindof knife. right here we are using a victorinox stampedeight inch chef's knife. the best one i like to think of is holdingit in the middle of these two fingers. if you like to play drums it's much like holdinga drumstick, and you're going to put that right where thebolster meets the handle, and you're going to just lightly wrap yourindex finger around that, and then from there you can get any kind ofchopping motion
or slicing motion appropriate to whateverfood you'll be working with. the first versatile piece of fruit or vegetablein the kitchen for a chef's knife would be the tomato. i'll show you two ways on how to slice anddice this. be sure to keep your blade as sharp as possible. we've demonstrated that in a different video,sharpening vs. honing. big thing here is you do not want to go straightdown on the tomato. it's got a very sensitive skin so you're going to want to be pushing forwardas you go down.
what you do from here is take all those slicesthat you just had, stack them up nice and high, and from here we're going to get the nicelittle dice. then rotate it 90 degrees. then you've got it going the other way. be careful you don't stack too high and it slips out of the bottom, and then you're going to get a little imperfectdice. so some recipes call for tomatoes being seedless
so i'll show you how to do that now using a cored tomato that i've already prepped. start cutting it into quarters, and then from there we take out the seeds mmuch like you will a pepper. i'll show you that in a minute, and just set those flesh pieces right offto the side. so now that you've got all your flesh pieces just want to slice these into little juliennestrips,
and then from there you just take all yourjulienne strips and then go the opposite direction. try and get a nice quarter inch dice. next, we've got the santoku knife, the mercer genesis high carbon german steelblade is what we have. it is also very comparable to a chef's knife, very versatile and used for many applications. this particular santoku has a granton edge often called a fluted edge or a hollow edge,
but the technical term is granton, and basically this creates air pockets between the blade and the food so that way it's easier to come off the bladeafter you've made a cut. here is just one of two cutting techniqueson an onion that we typically like to use. save this piece for your scraps, your stockpots and whatnot. peel the first layer of skin back on the onion.
keep the root intact because that's goingto come in very handy for a various reasons. we're going to do a dice here, and probably make about a quarter inch slice all the way through different layers of theonion applying a little bit of pressure on the topto keep it in place and don't go all the way through like i hadjust done. come back the other way with the tip of yoursantoku, and we're going to make little slices allthe way about three quarters of the way through downto the root
so that way theoretically it would all stayintact, and then from here you can make nice slicingmotions on the onion and you've got your great quarter inch dice. so next we've got the paring knife. here i've got a four inch victorinox paringknife. paring knives are great for when your chef'sknife or santoku knife doesn't quite get the job done as far as accuracy, precision or detail or creating that nicefine cut that you need. so right now we're going to use that victorinoxparing knife
on an orange and show you how to segment citrus. so i like to hold it like the drumstick again in your fulcrum right at the bolster, and then use the tip of your index finger near the tip of the blade so that way you get that nice precision accuracy. and you can use that to core certain stuff. i'll show you here as we segment, but we're going to segment this orange.
we're going to slice off the tops and bottoms, and then from here i'm just going to do anice rounding pattern to get this pith out of here. so here you save the scraps great for incense, ggreat for candles, soaps, etc., etc. now, here you can see the orange. you can see the individual segments themselves so you're going to take your paring knife and just go on the inside of one of thosepith areas and create a little v
and you're going to cut out that segment,and on to the next one. all right, next we've got a slicing knife. here we're using the mercer millenia series. it's an eleven inch granton edge slicing knife. so here we're going to slice this beautiful,rested and seasoned pork chop that came off the grill. here instead of going down and making yourslices, we want to cut on the bias so you're going to rotate your blade down
and just cut off that first nice little edge, and then from there about a quarter inch backevery single time putting firm pressure on the back of the chop so that way it doesn't slide away from you, and try and get full slices of the blade forwardand then back. forward through the meat, and as you come back you should be in contactwith the board cutting the chop all the way down throughthe bottom, forward and back.
so other applications for the slicing knifespecifically is that way you're not sawing through yourmeat. again, slicer knives are mostly for proteins. any kind of chef knife, paring knife, or boning knife, filet knife, you're not going to get that nice smooth cutfrom front to back on your protein. again, you want to stay away from any kindof sawing motions when using a knife, and having a nice long slicing blade
is going to allow you to do that in a largepiece of protein. there are other variations of a slicing knifeas well. there's what is called the serrated edge. a lot of times you see this slicing knifefor bread something that is a little bit more hard orcrusty on the outer surface so that way you can actually get through it. one other point to mention though is always be sure to properly take care ofyour knives when washing and storing them. be sure that you're always hand washing yourknives.
never put them in a dishwasher because the temperatures are way too highespecially for the handles, and if you have a wood handle it's just goingto destroy it. we've got these nice little blade guards frommercer, and they're great for protecting your knives'honed and sharpened new blade steel. and that sums up another episode of knifeknow-how from the kitchen of bar lilly at the brokerinn in boulder, colorado i'm chris tavano from tundra restaurant supply and to better mise en place!
Comments
Post a Comment