Cutting...Without Cutting Myself

The first lesson in my foundations lab was on knife skills. Woot! I've always wanted to learn how to chop, slice, and dice properly. And, of course, I want to do it well and with speed so I can be all fancy.

Before we ever set foot in the kitchen the chef told us there would be cuts today. In fact, we had a member of the previous class joining us because he cut his thumb so badly in the first 20 minutes of his class that he had to go to the emergency room.

I was determined I would not cut myself-I so didn't want to be THAT person.

Cutting properly is way harder than it looks. You have to hold the knife a certain way. Mind you, it is a 10-inch German steel knife with a dangerous edge that is considered a concealed weapon if you get pulled over and the cop wants to be a jerk. Curling you fingers under is f-ing hard. And, of course, each cut needs to be the same thickness for even cooking.

Lesson One: Building Muscle Memory with Celery

How many cuts can you get from one stalk of celery?

8. Depends on the recipe. 32. All answers called out in seconds. I thought the girl that said it depended on the recipe was clever. I must remember to make friends with her.

Anyways, what do you think?

Made me think of that old tootsie pop commercial. How many licks does it take to get to the center. Instead how many cuts to get to the end of the stalk.

Well, the expectation was that we all achieve 1,000 slices from 1 stalk of celery. Yep, I said 1000.

Then, chef demonstrated one slice the width of a contact lens that made my brain feel like I'd dipped it in pop rocks and walked outside in the rain. PERSPECTIVE CHANGED.

That day I practiced on celery for 45 minutes. I did not cut myself! Two others did.

One that did happened to be the person that showed up two hours late for a 3 hour class. Then, tried to repeatedly sit while we went through knife exercises. She also did not help clean at the end of the night. Let's just say she's already on my list!

Since the lesson I've practice at home. I have to admit I did nick my thumb once. The 1/8 cut, and that's probably stretching it, bled for an hour. These knives are seriously sharp. Lesson learned on the thumb curl.

After the celery we went on to carrots and onions with fancy cuts of different widths. We also spent 6 hours cooking eggs. More on those later.