Knife drills 101

Easy and fun ways to improve your knife work.

In school I struggled with my knife work enormously, I would always stay after class, come in before class do whatever I could so I could improve just the smallest amount, and you know what? it payed off! I still wasn't good as half the people in my class but the next time we had a knife skills test I had definitely improved and here what I did.

Draw lines, and squares

After our first terms class had consistently not meet our instructors goals that he had wanted us too he had us draw. Draw lines, that were 1/4", 1/2", and 3/4" these are all the sizes of different cuts that we were supposed to do for the class in order to pass the test. I didn't do this a lot, as matter of fact just a few times, but even doing it that little bit I saw myself improving or gaining a little bit of confidence in my knife work, now if I had only stuck with this a little bit longer who knows how much better I could have become and faster.

Cut up a few dozen potatoes 

And by a few dozen I mean a few HUNDRED dozen! Thinking back to my first two months in culinary school is a little bit of a trip, I'm thinking back to just how much I used to struggle with even the simplest of task astounds me. I say basic but really I should say fundamental, at the time these skills were so hard, so new to me I didn't know what to do, but keeping with them, and practicing them and asking as many questions as I could get away with helped me soo much, so cutting potatoes might not be that much fun after the first 20 or so, but keep up with it, you'll be glad you did in the end.

Time yourself

This I did a lot of, and it wasn't by choice believe me hahahaha, but again it's one of the things that I'm really glad for looking back on it, because of this I got so much faster it was hard for me to believe at the time and even now it is, my knife worked has slip A LOT since I've left the culinary program and doing management now, pretty soon I'll be doing my externship so I'm thinking I'm going to revisit these myself and see how much I can improve.