In the beginning...

Welcome to tips and tricks. My goal is to help you learn the different kinds of cuts, kitchen equipment, and more. Use this as a tool to help you with recipes that are posted on here, and in your everyday life!

Knives

Knives for the Kitchen

The first thing I'm going to teach you is the three basic knives that every home Chef should have in their kitchen. A chef knife, a boning knife, and a paring knife. You'll see below pictures of all three knives and their descriptions. Let's do this!

Lets first start with one knife everyone should have in their kitchen, the chefs knife. This knife is an all purpose knife. Its designed to perform just about any kitchen task. You can use this knife for slicing, chopping, mincing and more!

Next, we have the boning knife. With a flexible curved blade that is 5-7 inches long, it allows you to remove skin and bones from fish and meat with ease. It also has the ability to cut through any joint or bone, and cut meat away cleanly. It also allows you to be able to make thinner cuts through meat and fish.

Here we have the paring knife. This short, small blade is perfect for detailed cutting, mincing, dicing and peeling such things as fruits and vegetables. The blades on this knife are sharp, making exact cuts. Being such a small blade gives it the ability to fit into tight corners and curves with ease.

A tool every home chef should have in their kitchen is a honing steel, like pictured above. Its usually made of either steel, ceramic or diamond coated steel. The most common is steel. This tool is not to sharpen the blade, but to keep the edge perfect and to smooth out irregularities. It is also used to maintain the edge, and keep it sharp as you use it. Holding the blade at a 20 degree angle on the steel, you make light even strokes alternating from one side of the blade to the other. If you use the steel often, you will rarely have to sharpen your blade with a stone or manual sharpener.

Lastly, your kitchen should have either a manual knife sharpener or a sharpening stone.

Pictured above is a manual knife sharpener. To use it you would make several light strokes through it from the heel of the blade to the tip. This is a very easy tool to use and can be found just about anywhere.

A sharpening stone is the most traditional. If using a stone, you would hold your knife firmly. starting at the tip of the blade on the stone holding at a 20 degree angle. Using your other hand as a guide holding the backside of the blade, you draw your knife over the stone gently away from you. You want to be sure to keep your motion smooth and even to the heel of the blade. If you're a visual learner, there are plenty of reference videos on YouTube.