If you use wooden cutting boards / blocks, rub mineral oil into them every once in a while. This will reduce the water they absorb and make them less likely to warp or split.
The chopping technique is not really that necessary. It’s great for chopping lots of veggies at speed, but if you’re just cutting veggies for a single meal then there’s not that much benefit unless you’re already highly practiced and that’s your default.
What’s far more important is just being cognizant for each cut you make. Walk don’t run.
The chopping technique is about eliminating risk, mostly. Sure for a single meal and being aware you’ll be fine. But getting into the habit of a good technique means you’ll be fine even when you’re tired or distracted
If you want to spend the time and effort to practice that technique, go for it. But the benefits don’t really make it worth it for most people.
into the habit of a good technique means you’ll be fine even when you’re tired or distracted
The technique described in the image is not the only “good technique”. A person could reasonably develop their own “good technique” simply by being cognizant of their cutting.
There are but two necessary knives. A chef’s knife and a paring knife. Sharpened appropriately. Usually not even a paring knife but sometimes the small size is beneficial.
Bread knife would like a word. Chef knife technically works but bread knives are usually longer and work much better at cutting without smooshing.
Scissors too. A good pair of kitchen scissors makes slicing small vegetables like green onions much easier.
Holy shit I never thought about using the scissors on actual food, I’ve only ever used them to open packages containing food
Also great for cutting a pizza.
Sharpen your knife. If it’s not able to cut bread or tomatoes without smooshing it needs sharpening.
I can cut bread and tomatoes. A bread knife does a better job with bread.
And a filet knife does better with fish. And a boning plus a slicing knife does much better with meat. Not my point but that’s ok.
A butter knife could cut them all too.
Bread knives are so much nicer to cut bread with though. But yeah, a chef’s knife and a paring knife are all you “need”.
I definitely need a bread knife to properly cut good bread, if only for the teeth. The bread I eat is more dense and has a hard crust compared to say American wonderbread. I also like to dry out some of it and then double toast slices for that extra crunchiness. No way a smooth edge can deal with that.
I was a professional cook (up to sous chef) in fine dining for a decade. Guess I’m just an amateur yet.
Well good for you, i guess you cooking anecdotally in fine dining invalidates my experience entirely. All of a sudden the bread parts itself on my chef knife like the red sea for moses.
Perhaps you just need to learn to use the knife properly. Knives also need a steel which should be used regularly. Blunting a knife on a crust shouldn’t be a thing if you keep your blade sharp. That’s the point.
I’d include a santoku in there, and probably some scissors. Sometimes you just need the straight edge of a santoku, instead of the curved edge of a chef’s knife.
And sometimes serration is necessary. You’ll blunt your chefs knife on certain sourdough crusts, or crush softer breads, but a bread knife will glide right through.
I use a bred knife to slice cheese off a block every day. Line it up and push down, one hand on handel the other on the spine at the top. It works better than any other knife to slice cheese blocks.
This post makes it sounds like I am committing a war crime.
This should be noted that the knife part is only for western style knives. Same with the cutting technique. That’s only for a curved type blade.
I can’t even find a proper curved blade in most western kitchens I’ve visited…smh
Are you saying that the chef knives they have are too straight for your liking? As you want more rocking motion. Probably best bet is a custom knife.
A chefs knife is fine. I’m saying most people buy shitty knives that are not chef’s knives.
“Pick the right blade.” Santoku. The answer is Santoku.
I’m a bunka kind of fella.
I don’t like the curved point of mine, I think I’ll go for a chef knife instead
Nah chef’s knives are better, more versatile.
It might be a matter of preference/taste?
in my experience, granton blades just make the food stick more. i always figured it was just a lazy way for companies to save on materials.
It doesn’t help them save on material since the knife is ground from an originally flat slab of steel. The amount of material they remove from that bar is irrelevant to their materials cost, although it does add a bit of machine work.
The scallops in the blade are effective at preventing some foods from sticking only if you are using a long slicing motion. When chopping down from above they accomplish nothing.
that settles it - i’m just a bad choppa
Get to it!
This chart is missing a knife that I have. The blade hooks forward instead of backwards, like a bird’s beak.
Since it’s small and the tip extra pointy, I use it for precision cutting. I’ve also found it useful for thin slides of cheese, since the blade is also not as thick as the other knives in my set. Still, I’m wondering what its actual purpose is for.
Santoku knife. I was just about to comment the same thing.
I have that one too but that’s not the knife I’m talking about. It’s about the size of a paring knife and it hooks forward. Almost like a scythe but not nearly as dramatic of* a curve.
(When I get home from work I can upload a picture if anyone cares to help out.)
I’m pretty sure it’s just called a bird’s beak paring knife.
Reading further about it, it’s intended for tasks while holding the object you are cutting, rather than using a cutting board. Like peeling an apple in your hand.
Ah okay that makes sense. I prefer a peeler, but I can see purists preferring such a knife. Thanks for the info.
Of course this is done in idiocy imperial. Fuck your 'Murican “we need to be special so we use this objectively shitty thing to be different”. Only 3% of the world has a use for this, while the rest 97% are fucking tired of having to do extra work to convert.
What the fuck are you on about? What do you need to convert in this?
I guess things like dicing = 1/4" cubes
Yeah, because saying “6.25mm cubes” is so much more efficient /s
A chefs knife will do for everything. Keep it sharp enough and it’ll even slice bread. As for the onion horizontal cuts are unnecessary. Offset radial cuts are fine (as you move away from the centre vertical cut you angle it more).
What’s the x axis on those graphs? I can’t zoom in enough on this picture to read it. I did look it up, but I only found versions with the exact same resolution
I think it says “Number of Cuts,” but it’s really hard to tell.
I have absolutely no idea. I grabbed the first illustration that showed what I described (poorly).
It’s not your fault; even if you could zoom in, there’s not enough resolution to make out any details.
Your Lemmy app is probably preventing you from zooming images beyond a 1:1 pixel ratio, preventing you from zooming them past their native resolution. Voyager doesn’t have that issue, if you were considering a different app.
darn I need to save this 🔖
As a chef, the only inaccuracy I see here is that bamboo cutting boards are good for knives. They are a great, cheap, sustainable option, but the silica content makes bamboo incredibly hard, and it will dull your blades faster than wood or plastic cutting boards.
What about using the bread knife for meat?
Edit: also what’s “produce”?
I never understood why people use serrated knives for bread, it gets crumbs everywhere. I use a sharp chef knife instead and it’s much cleaner. I use it for 95% of stuff, there’s no much need for any other.
That’s one way to say you never had anything besides soft buns and bread.
Once you get full grain or (as someone mentioned) a bread with a hard crust, you will wish for a serrated knive.I’m European. I don’t eat soft bread. I think none of you have a sharp knife.
Oh it’s plenty sharp. My finger tested it :)
If you’re cutting soft soft bread, then a plain blade is fine, but if it’s a crusty bread like a sourdough, the serrated blade is much better at cutting the crust without crushing the soft interior (IME, not a chef)
I don’t see this suggesting a bread knife for meat, but a dull serrated blade beats a worn plain edge for any purpose. And produce is anything grown like fruit and veg.
It’s got produce, bread, and meat highlighted for the bread knife.
The only thing I’ve ever used a bread knife for is bread.
Ah I didn’t see that little spiral graph. I agree with you for anyone who keeps their knives sharp. But if you’re trying to cut thin slices off a roast and have to choose between a bread knife and a dull chef’s knife, I’d likely go for the bread knife. That said, I don’t know they intended it that way, and it totally could have just been an error.
“Produce” is presumably fruit and vegetables, although that’s a pretty broad category to lump together given that so many vegetables behave differently. Consider a tomato versus lettuce or a yam, for instance.
The infographic only states that a bread knife is good for bread. It is correct in this regard.
Produce is the general term for fruits and vegetables and things of the like.
The bread knife has markers in the produce, bread, and meat sections
American for fruit and veg.
Digamos verduras en la mejora de América
Thanks!
The best cutting boards use end-grain for this exact reason. It’s not just a decorative thing. The direction of the wood grain directly determines how quickly the board will dull your knife. Wood is made of two main parts: A hard fiber, and a soft filler in between each fiber. The hard fiber is what dulls your knife when you cut.
Imagine cutting on a tightly packed bundle of really tiny straws. If you cut across the bundle, your knife will be cutting into each straw, dulling in the process. But if you cut on the end of the bundle, the knife blade will slide between the straws instead of cutting them.
The straws will last longer when you’re cutting on the end (because you’re not cutting them) and your blade will last longer (because it isn’t cutting the straws). And an end grain cutting board is essentially cutting on the end of the straw bundle.
Bamboo cutting boards suck because you can’t put then in the dishwasher. They break apart from the heat, which also means that you can’t get the water hot enough to sanitize (140°F+), so hand washing is a non-option either without burning yourself.
I will add another bullet point to the list above, specifically regarding cutting boards. Poly cutting boards are also acceptable and primarily what I use. However, if I see you using a glass cutting board or a plate as a cutting board, or chopping directly on your granite countertop, I am afraid I am going to have to hurt you.
I am, as you can imagine, the default knife sharpener within the circle of my family and friends. However for quite some years I would not sharpen any knives for my sister anymore because she refused stop using her stupid 1980s glass cutting boards. (I believe they were probably actually intended to be serving trays, but good luck making people understand that.) She kept complaining that my sharpening was “no good” because her knives dulled so quickly.
I was eventually able to coordinate with my brother in law who was also sick of it, and we located all of the glass boardlike objects in the house and surreptitiously threw them away.
Is “poly” a local american slang for plastic? Anyway I prefer wood because I’d rather have some wood fibres in my food than microplastic. Not that anyone knows if it’s actually harmful or not
Wood for most stuff, plastic for meat and fish because I don’t want meat juice soaking into the wood.
Fair point
And now all my fruits taste like garlic, thanks
Apparently, surprisingly, bacteria grow/anchor better in plastic. than wood. (wood might still absorb the juices more easily)
Sort of. Polymer, actually. It’s a common end-run around calling something “plastic” outright because that in and of itself is typically a shorthand for “cheap” or “flimsy.”
Anyway, the plastic cutting boards in commercial use (i.e. the ones I use because I am that kind of nerd) are made of high density polyethylene.
Doing the lord’s work here.
- Why is this a jpg?
- No need for the horizontal onion cuts
- Nice guide nevertheless
For an onion, I’ve never diced it by making the cuts indicated by number 1, figuring the layers essentially do that for you. Am I doing it wrong?
No, people do it both ways and you’ll even find both techniques by the pros. But anybody claiming it makes them more even I really don’t think is thinking it through. By adding the extra cut across those natural layers, you’re actually making to very small bits when the crosscut is near the layer boundary.
That’s why I think it is not only easier but superior not to add the crosscut.
I radially dice my onion. To me it seems like the horizontal and vertical cuts leave more uneven bits considering the layers already present. I angle my “vertical” cuts towards the center, then start chopping.
Not wrong per se, but you’ll end up with more inconsistently sized pieces if you don’t do those initial cuts in my experience
