November 20, 2005

• Post-script: Keeping my fingers out of the way of the shiny bladey thing is already a tip I've thought of.
• mmmmm...Finger food.
• I had a really neat link I was going to post, that I probably found here on MoFi, but I am highly dismayed to find that the article it should link to doesn't feel like existing anymore. Interestingly, the article is still sort of there. How to Cut Didn't find it at the Internet archive for some reason. Maybe someone else can manage that. Anyway, it's a bunch of tips specific to different things you may be trying to cut. There's also a more general section on knives at that site that is still fully there. Knives That was all rather useful to me, hope you find it so.
• Use a really sharp knife, hold your fingers out of the way of the food by either holding the food with your fingertips behind your knuckles or with your knuckles themselves, so the knife can't touch them. I'll be working up a proper set of instructions on my site at some point, but for now I've linked to cutlery.com for a basic overview. If you can find the Soup's On episode of good eats where he makes vegetable soup with his "nephew", that's a great intro to knife skills as well.
• Cheers for both those links shandrin and Sandpiper. I suspect knife bluntness is an issue in my inadequate tiny Japanese excuse for a kitchen. Bobsled you ratbag - since when is pasta finger food? (Answer: when gomichild makes it (~^) )
• What Sandspider said, about curling your fingertips under. Also, when peeling using a knife, direct the blade away from you. Peeling towards you is a good way to slice your thumb open. (Better yet, buy a vegetable peeler. They're easier and safer to use and there's less waste.)
• Too bad Peter Herzmann pulled that article, because it was the best "how-to" on knife handling I have ever seen.
• Hey you know you can highlight the text and copy it into a text editor...
• Curling fingers good. And also: - sharp knife. Blunt knives slide and they make ragged cuts when they do cut you. - the first cut with any round food is in half. Then place the food flat-side down so it cannot roll or shift. - cut on a wooden block so food can't slide. - don't use a big knife for fiddly things or vice versa - if you have to press hard, your knife isn't sharp enough. And pressing hard leads to accidents. - slide the knife as you cut, let the edge do the work.
• For extra bonus monkey points - I am also keen on any fish-filleting technique linkage.
• You can also just copy that page with the article, and then edit out the popup... But yeah, that's why I figured I'd post the link even though it was asserting that it was no longer there. :)
• Damn that Hertzmann! Well, they did leave a basic guide to knife use here. Mourns the loss of the vegetable-specific cutting guides.
• A few tip ideas: If you know anyone who subscribes to Cooks Illustrated, I think they had an article on vegetable prep within the last 24 months. Plus, there are a couple cutting tools that might make life easier for you. One is this thing called the Alligator Dicer that dices onions, carrots, potatoes, etc with one push. It looks like something off a cheap infomercial, but it works amazingly well and keeps your fingers away from the sharp edges. The other is the Kyocera Ceramic Slicer. It's a ceramic slicing blade mounted in a plastic tray that you run the vegetable back and forth across. The ceramic is extremely sharp but again, your fingers mostly stay away from the sharp edges due to a protective grip, and I've found that the ceramic blade doesn't cut fingers as easily in general. Both are available from William Sonoma, but I'm sure you can find them from cheaper kitchen suppliers.
• Gimme those extra bonus monkey points. And some more. You definitely want a knife with a long, thin, narrow blade for filleting fish - a boning knife or a filleting knife. And it must be very sharp or you'll tear the fish flesh and it won't cope with scales/bones. And a steel to keep it sharp in between fish (you did catch more than one, didn't you?) Here in New Zealand, most people cut fillets by gliding the knife over the rib bones around the body cavity and omitting the wings. This does avoid the rib bones and any possible tainting from the guts, but I consider it a criminal waste of good fish. I urge you in particular to keep the wings, there's good eating on them. In any case, it may be worth keeping the backbone or so-called middle fillet if you've left a lot of flesh on it, perhaps for soup. Also, with really big fish, the cheeks are honestly the best bit. Sneer at people who only use heads for soup or worse, throw them away. They do not deserve to have whole fish. Eel and shark require a different approach, basically cutting the head partway off, loosening around the neck, and then peeling off the skin. Don't cut fillets close to the backbone on shark - you'll taint the flesh with ammonia.
• Bobsled the ratbag... Bobsled, the ratbag. That's got a nice ring to it. I like it. Kinda chimes right together with "you little green freak."
• *flings many monkey bonus points at vitalorgnz* Possibly a filleting glove will solve all my knife-clumsy problems...(~^)
• I wish I'd saved that Hertzmann "how to cut" article the first time I read it. I wonder if there is an extension that can automatically save your firefox bookmarks. Anyway, I need to practise my knifeskills, especially since I'm a cook by trade now! Ack! Thanks for the links, and I'd love anyone who has a full copy of that hertzmann article.
• the first cut with any round food is in half Yet again, the willful stupidity of you horrible subhuman monsters really takes my breath, and the breath of those in my immediate vicinity, away. How can you turn even the simplest common-sense activities into occasions to vomit out the most dangerous and ill-conceived LIES? The stupidity of you idiots is truly incalculable - believe me, I've done a lot of calculus, and if I had to write down the integral of your stupidity it would be ... well, it would be quite long, with lots of xs and ys, and one of those long squiggly "s" things - "s" for "stupid subhuman fuckwits = YOU". Here, then is the TRUTH about CUTTING. Please sharpen your knives and proceed to cut off your ears and eyelids so that your sensory apparatus will not be blocked from receiving this WISDOM. (1) Your first cut should be a cutting remark, e.g. "Call yourself an apple? Your co-evolved seed delivery vector is bland and tasteless, you fuck." (2) Your second cut should divide the fruit or vegetable into two separate domains of well-formed sentences, each with a separate truth value, such as "tasty" and "the manky bits". Perform this operation LOGICALLY after first having defined your language particles and rules of inference. (3) Now stab that fucker! Stab harder! HARDER! OK, not that hard. It's just a courgette dude - not a ninja assassin. Now stab it again! YEE-HAH! (4) Now clean up the bits of your own finger you just accidentally cut off. (5) Your next and final cut should be made with "Final Cut Pro" or "Windows E-Z Copyrighted AudioVisual Putter-Togetherer Version 5.762(b)". (6) Now cut off someone's else's remark with a da- Thanks. I'll just be sitting here in a pool of my own blood if you need any more advice.
• *hands the quidnunc kid a spare bandaid*
• These have worked well for me.
• *locks away metal cutlery*
• The first cut is the deepest.
• Baby, I know.
• I just love gadgets like that. Especially if they come with hand cranks.
• Don't talk about hand cranks, you'll get quiddy all excited.
• Oh ha-ha, Mrs Ko. It is to laugh.
• Don't mention wankle rotary engines either ...
• I don't need an engine to do THAT.
• ewwwww! Guess we won't be using that cutting board ever again. Or the toaster. Or the pot holders. Somebody get him outta here.