Professional Chefs Compete in a Knife Skills Speed Challenge | Test Kitchen Talks | Bon Appétit

So what is that? Yes, Mademoiselle, the sweet potato. Alright. I'm going to take my own time. I haven't done it in a long time. I don't think I did these two things before doing this to the ginger. I feel pretty good about my

knife

skills

. I think they're pretty good. I am not ashamed of my

knife

skills

. I'm by no means the best with a knife, but I'm comfortable with it, you know, I don't feel like it at all. out of my reach, but I definitely spend a lot less time cooking than these guys. I don't know, we'll figure it out and leave, but no one killed the garlic.

There are a few ways to mince a clove of garlic and often, I think you'll see people just cut it all the way up and julienne them and then cross them, but I think the most accurate way to do it is to cut it the same way you would. half an onion just by placing it. on its flat side or cut a flat side if necessary, make cuts horizontally perpendicular to those and then cut them leaving the end makes a perfect dice. I was of the small garlic school because that's what you use Todd right now, but nowadays I quote it sometimes and then I repeat it: you just put it at home because I'm going to chop it the more oil and the more flavor we lose.

I tried not to overdo the garlic. I prefer to give it a thick cut. Proper minced meat feels like there is very little order, people usually crush the garlic and then just chop it over and over again which just breaks it up even more and bruises it. I rarely do this with this method. I don't really cut or mince garlic. I tend to use it in different ways. This was probably the trickiest for me because it was the densest. You don't really care what my performance is. There were some tapered ends on this. and I said cut them out and throw them away, go in.

I guess she still had that idea that you don't want to waste, she squared everything up like that was cheating. The ideal would be to peel this and then, but for the sake of time I mean. Who is cutting potatoes into these small pieces? If home cooks are watching this. I just want to be like you know. No, don't do this at home. This is a waste of time and he will do it so quickly. Annoying, no, we'll just call them trapezoids and triangles. I'm getting a lecture for Brad. Actually, not being lazy is probably the number one knife skill.

Have a clear sense of workflow. You can definitely always tell them that someone is putting in their time. and a lot of

professional

kitchen

s because there's a certain way that they work and a certain cleanliness to their style, if you see someone and it's like they're cutting the carrots in this corner of the board because, like the rest of the board. It's full of garlic paste and jicama puree that's not good, you can't work like that, come on, this is a tough guy. I don't get points for squaring it up, there's probably a better way to do it, but I know, it's like normally you're thinking about the yields and with the jicama I just squared it up and then I put up planks and then we stacked the planks and then we went over them pretty much. classic when I was reporting a story a few years ago.

Kim, who owns a Korean restaurant in Brooklyn, called Insa. She was preparing vegetables for kimchi and she was making a julienne like that and she just squared the edge, fanned it out and went to town, it's much more stable. much easier and I can do it much faster than you if you really wanted that, even when you go to culinary school you do these four weeks at a time every day and your homework, the joke is like, oh God. the dog ate my homework no, it's not really about cutting the perfect little square, it's a matter of being hours behind a gentleman, having a sharp knife is certainly, in my opinion, much less dangerous than a dull knife all night, you have to fight it and you have to like push a little harder and do stupid things, a good sharp knife, you are in control and you know it becomes an extension of your hand, time, yes, and no I'm trying to hurry because if you hurry you cut your finger.

I think it's pretty good considering how much time has passed. I mean, this is not the same but I don't think it's that bad for a chef. My own hands. You know, I'm a little disappointed with my julienne. I was in a hurry, but you know I wasn't. I'm not going to punish myself for that. I felt it was more important to execute them all correctly than to do them for

speed

because I don't really work in an environment. where you need to do things to achieve

speed

, I think speed is very important, but you want to be

compete

nt and then you don't want to waste your always bouncing off each other, obviously the pinnacle would be to be incredibly fast and incredibly accurate.

I didn't go to culinary school. I don't think you need to know how to cut things very quickly into tiny, precise shapes. I don't know the words for "Mademoiselle" or whatever, so I went to well, I did a culinary school here in Manhattan, if there's one thing they definitely taught it was how to do it, you know the old formal French cuts and it's really just about discipline, concentration and attention to detail, they tell you to do something by following instructions when doing it. You know, I was the kind of person who in school was trying to do a good job, definitely listen, I was there to learn a lot as quickly as possible, so these are not things you normally do in everyday life and certainly not and the bone

test

of appetite in the

kitchen

just because it's like an old-fashioned work style, although we are quite

compete

nt in our knife skills, we know that not everyone at home can be, that's why I'm not asking for any type of julienne or that I learned to use and even learned to prepare things from many different people before working on appetite.

I worked in kitchens and it was the only job that From 17 to 23 I was working in the back of the house, so yeah, like a combination of having a lot of similar cooks that taught me different things and I taught myself. I went the restaurant route so I started working in restaurants and I was 16, the first restaurant I worked at the Beacon Hill bistros in Boston and worked there at a station my mom's, but my last prep task before service every day was to prepare garlic noit and then very finely chopped chives and parsley and also shallot brunoise, which you do a lot. of practice in restaurants where you cut the same thing over and over again for a particular dish that is on the menu and then it stays on the menu.

I had to prepare about a half-liter container of each of those and that first took me like three hours and I wasn't ready for service many days and eventually I got faster and faster, you know, I feel like in America, especially with television, everyone is used to competitions and you can do it the fas

test

and the best, and for me that's the opposite of how I like to cook if you're in a hurry it's because something happened or you know you're a little in the weeds but in a ideal situation everything should be controlled and calm and that's crazy fast cooking stressful is not the kind of thing I liked I don't consider myself a person who worries about the small things, like who cares if you can't cut things diced as long as the food tastes good yeah there's no need for this I hate it eating contests in the worst way they're the absolute worst it's not cooking it's not fun for anyone maybe the sick person watching