How to Hold Food When Cutting with a Chef’s Knife
March 19, 2008
If you’ve seen Iron Chefs dice onions faster than you can peel one, you may be wondering how they do it. Unfortunately, I can’t answer that; I don’t know. I do know, however, that the proper grip on food when cutting is imperative for improving both safety and speed. It is not a difficult technique, but it feels awkward at first. It is slowly becoming more natural as I continue to use it. In a future post I will discuss actual cutting techniques, but learning how to hold the food will go a long way towards increasing your safety and improving your speed and comfort while you slice and dice. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need a chef’s knife.
Essentially, your hand should look like it is old, stiff, and stuck in a claw shape…like so:
Your fingertips should be bent inward. You want the knuckles of your middle finger protruding the furthest; this will act as a buffer and guide for the knife. Besides the downward pressure with your ring, middle and index fingers, you’ll grip the food with your thumb and pinkie.
When you are ready to cut, hold the food in your claw grip and line up the knife so the blade - the large flat part, not the edge - lightly touches the knuckle of your middle finger. This finger can guide the knife as you cut, and because the tip is behind your knuckle, there is no worry of cutting it. Now you can just slide your left hand back along the food, maintaining pressure, while the knife cuts, guided by your knuckles.
This feels strange at first, but the more you do it the more comfortable you’ll become. Not to mention you will immediately feel better about not slicing off the tips of your fingers.
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March 19th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
What a great post. I’ve often wondered how exactly to do that, tried unsucessfully, got frustrated and then ended up doing it the same old way. I’ll be trying this from now on! (Should I now worry about slicing off a knuckle?)
March 19th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Maybe a little, but I find that I don’t normally bring the knife up high enough to get it above where your knuckle sticks out. Glad it helped, although it definitely feels strange at first (and it still does for me somewhat).
March 20th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Great post, Andy! Very useful - the visuals help a lot!
March 20th, 2008 at 9:46 am
The Professional Knife Kit is a good knife instruction manual from CIA. It is available on Amazon.
Yesterday I found ‘Knife Skills Illustrated - A User’s Manual’ by Peter Hertzman at B & N (unfortunately there is one across the street from where I work, a big one too).
In the near future I hope to do a comparative review of the two on my blog.
Since you just want the edge of the blade high enough to move the object being cut, the edge should not come within a knuckle length of the joint.
If you live within a couple of hours drive time of Hyde Park New York, the CIA offers a 6 hour knife skills course for the enthusiast which includes lunch (and guess who gets to prep a lot of lunch), currently for under $200. Most Professional Chef schools that offer courses to the non-pro probably have a knife skills course worth taking.
You can bring your own knives, but they will supply all you need. It also includes serious instruction on how to sharpen your knives.