Hello, it’s Harper Melton again! Today I’d thought I tell you about something near and dear to my heart: learn to cook. As a student living on my own, I realized that I had never really cooked for myself. I either ate at the college dining hall, my parents’ cooking, or out at restaurants. It was when I moved into my own apartment that I realized I really wanted to learn to cook for myself.
I’ve learned a lot about cooking over the past few years, and, today, I thought that I would share with you some cooking basics. I thought that I would start from the beginning - what do you need to know before you even try to make a single recipe? The first thing you must have in your kitchen to get started cooking is a chef's knife. Growing up, my parents had all these random knives in their kitchen and half of them were not very sharp. Having a nice sharp knife is really going to make a huge difference. You do not need to go spend hundreds of dollars on a chef's knife, but you do want to make a slight investment on a knife because this is something that can use for years. I went to Williams-Sonoma and learned a lot about knives from an employee. I personally like the Shun Premier 8” Western Chef’s Knife from Williams-Sonoma. It’s a knife that is simple and feels good in your hand. As a side note, Williams-Sonoma will sharpen your knife whenever you bring it into the store.
What are we going to do with your new Shun Premier 8” Western Chef’s Knife from Williams-Sonoma? The first thing that we're going to get started on is learning to slice and dice vegetables. Let’s first practice the rocking motion of slicing and dicing on a cutting board in your kitchen before we begin. Think of it like a boat - the tip is going to be pointed down and you're going to push down and up - a rocking motion with your hand and at the border. That is how you're going to cut things. You're not going to just press down on them because that smashes the vegetable. I also learned over time that not all vegetables are created and chopped the same. For example, chopping a bell pepper is a little bit different than chopping an onion. For a bell pepper, slice off the ends, however, you don't want to slice off too much especially on the stem end. Also, be careful with your new knife, because if you have a flat hand and you're just pressing down the vegetable and you're chopping, you may slice your fingertip off. Your new super sharp knife will slide right through your tip, and you'll have to go hospital. However, if you have your hand in a claw position and not flat, you can literally put your knife right up against your knuckle - which is what you're supposed to do.
When slicing the bell pepper, make all pieces of the pepper uniform in shape to make sure that each piece is approximately the same size. You can also cut the pepper into nice, beautiful little matchsticks (this is called the julienne). These are basically little matchstick type pieces that you can do to most any vegetable. With a bell pepper it's kind of uneven so it's not going to be perfect every time. You really want to make your cuts are the same to get those perfect beautiful little squares. I'm making these small just for the sake of this blog, but certainly make them bigger if you would like so. These cutting skills are skills I think you should practice at home.
To recap again, find a good knife that fits in your hand well and make sure that it is very sharp. A sharp knife will make your life a million times easier. I used the rocking motion to cut my vegetables, particularly using a bear claw with my hand holding the vegetable. Practice that rocking motion to assure your accuracy of the vegetable slices to make sure the strips and then the horizontals are the same size on every vegetable. If you can't get exact uniformity that's okay. Today we're just learning the basics. And these basics will take you a long way in the kitchen as you’re just staring out.
I hope that you learned something today. We will continue to teach you more about cooking so that soon you will no longer be a novice in your own kitchen! Toon in to next week to learn more about organization.
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