Baby Steps - Chopping

My knife is bigger than yours

Before the cooking starts, there is always the prep work and this almost invariably involves the use of a knife.  Knife skills are essential not just for efficiency, but also more importantly, for safety.  Once the safety aspect is established, we can then work on increasing the speed.  After all, slicing off part of one's finger will only cause more delays and being lazy, I just want to get over and done with the chopping so i can get back to lazing in front of the tv instead of going to the hospital.

Being lazy (i cant emphasize this enough) and not very proficient, I am not going to trying to teach anyone how to use a knife.  Rather, i have done my youtube research and my favourite thus far is this one below by Jamie Oliver.  Brief summary is appended below.





Method 1: Cross-chopping

• With one hand holding the butt of the knife, edge touching the chopping board, keep the palm of your other hand resting on the top of the blunt end of the knife. Make sure that your fingers are kept straight, so that they do not go near the blade.
• Using your palm as a base, move the butt of knife up and down in a rocking motion to chop
• This is safe, simple, but can be rather slow since you will need to chop for a long time in order to get a fine dice

Method 2: Tap-Chopping

• This requires slightly more technique.  Basically, you use one hand to hold what it is that you want to chop, while using your other hand to move the knife
• How to keep it safe?  You position your fingers 90 degrees to the knife, with thumb furthest away as a base and the rest of your fingers forming a line parallel to the knife.  Your middle finger is slightly out, and acts as a guide to the knife.  This way, all your fingers are kept intact :)
• As you continue to chop, move your hand back, away from the knife.  What is important here is stability, so that your fingers do not slip and end up under the blade.  You will need your onion/carrot flat on the chop board, and usually this means cutting it into halves before chopping, and to continually readjust and keep your veg stable. 
• Go slow to start with and as you get more comfortable, the speed will come with experience

Going one step further, you can apply this to chopping an onion.  First, slice the onion into half, but keep the stem so that it holds the onion together.  Next, make vertical and horizontal incisions, taking care not to cut all the way thorough.  Follow up with the tap-chop and you will end up with some lovely diced onions.

There are also videos on this by Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsey but the one by Jamie Oliver is my favourite.  He also has another video on slicing.  I have to admit i got quite excited after watching all these videos since prior to that I was doing my cutting it slice by slice.  The time saved was incredible and it ticked my boxes of "quick" and "simple".  On a more shallow level, it also made me feel one step closer to becoming a pro!