How to Learn Better Knife Skills

One of the tips for becoming a little less of a Kitchen Hopeless is to work on better knife skills.  Having better knife skills can make meal preparation both quicker and more efficient.  It can also make you look wicked impressive if someone is watching you.  I’m not all about appearances, but as a Kitchen Hopeless myself, it’s nice when someone comments positively on something I’ve done or prepared in the kitchen.

Now, in all honesty, you can read books and posts, as well as watch tons of videos, but the best way to improve your knife skills is simply by practicing, after checking out to make sure that you’re using proper and efficient techniques.

I’m not going to even try to pretend that I have good knife skills.  That is most definitely an area that I need to work on!  I also like to cheat sometimes and use my handy dandy food processor for slicing and shredding.  (Seriously – that thing is so cool and really not expensive for a food processor.  Plus, it saved me hours off of making my strawberry freezer jam this year.)

It is important to note that you don’t need a lot of knives in the kitchen.  We have a whole collection of junkie knives that we got in a cheap butcher block.  They’re fine to use for steak knives and the like, but if I’m really going to be doing some meal prep, I only use one of the three decent knives that I have:

• Wenger Grand Maitre 6-Piece Steak Knife Set – I only actually have one of these.  We love this one, and maybe one day I’ll get the whole set.
• Shun Classic 7-Inch Santoku Knife – No, I did not buy myself this expensive of a knife.  I do love having it now that I have it though.  I just lucked into winning this at a local kitchen store when they were having a promotion.  This thing is awesome and we keep it in the fancy box that it came in.
• A Bread Knife – I have a no name bread knife that I probably picked up at some box store.  Who knows.  I just know that it was the first time I ever bought a single knife in a package, rather than a set.  It comes in handy often, and I’m so glad that we have it.

I’ve admitted that I don’t have awesome knife skills, so you’ll excuse me that I am not going to personally give you many knife skills tips, but instead point you to some great resources for reading and watching to improve your kitchen knife skills.

Resources for Learning Basic Knife Skills

How to Learn Great Knife Skills

Knife Skills: How to Chop Like a Chef [5 Ingredients | 10 Minutes]

How to Hold Your Knife

Video: Basic Knife Skills

How to Master Basic Knife Skills: The Video

Knife Skills Videos from Chow.com (lots of videos, and this is a link to just one of them – you’ll see other options for knife skill videos below it)

Top Ten Knife Skills

Knife Skills 101

Knife Skill Videos from Worst Cooks in America Show on Food Network (this is a link to one of the videos – slicing, and you’ll see many more in the sidebar once you visit this one)

Okay now, chop chop!  Get to practicing with those knife skills and you’ll soon by feeding your family more stir fries than they can possibly imagine.

10 Days of Hope for the Kitchen Hopeless is part of the Autumn 2013 Hopscotch from iHomeschool Network, which features 10 day series from a variety of blogs on topics including household management, parenting, homeschooling, family life, and more.

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