Professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto breaks down what you need to know about the 5 knives every chef should have in their kitchen: a paring knife, a chef's knife, a serrated knife, a boning knife, and a peeler (along with the honing steel to keep them sharp!)
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00:00 I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor,
00:02 and today I'm going to talk about the knives you need to have in your kitchen.
00:05 I'm going to show you how to use a paring knife, a chef's knife, a serrated
00:09 knife, a boning knife, a peeler, and a honing steel.
00:13 This is Kitchen Knives 101.
00:17 The paring knife is a great utility knife for any small tasks you're going to
00:22 do in the kitchen. Generally a paring knife is four inches
00:25 long, it has a non-serrated edge, and a little bit of a
00:29 slope, and it's super ideal for doing things
00:32 with your hands. You're not ever really going to chop on a cutting board with
00:35 this, you're using it wrong if you are, but if you're peeling, shaping, deveining,
00:40 that's what this knife is for. In front of me I have an apple, and
00:43 generally I'm going to use a paring knife to peel this apple.
00:46 So let's give it a shot. You can see that I'm holding the knife
00:50 in one place and turning the apple into it.
00:53 I'm going to try and get one long peel. All right,
00:57 I think I did good. I can trim off the top, trim off the bottom.
01:01 I'm just going to cut into quarters, and here's another really great thing that
01:04 a paring knife is good for, getting out the cores of your apple.
01:08 Make nice easy movements with this. It's a super versatile knife in the
01:12 kitchen. It doesn't need to be super expensive,
01:14 this one costs about eight dollars, it stays sharp a long time,
01:19 feels good in your hand, and it gets a lot of work done. Don't be fooled by the
01:23 size of this knife, when used correctly it is a kitchen
01:26 powerhouse.
01:28 The next knife you're going to need in your kitchen is a chef's knife. A chef's
01:33 knife is generally eight to ten inches long.
01:36 It has a blade curving upwards along its length, ending in a narrow point.
01:40 Now, traditional chef knife doesn't look like this. This is more of a santoku
01:45 or a Japanese chef knife. Usually traditional chef's knives have a longer
01:49 and thinner blade at the front, but this is my personal knife and this
01:53 is the one I use all the time. A chef knife is used in the kitchen for
01:57 a wide range of items. You can chop, you can butcher, but I like
02:01 to use it to slice tomatoes. The knife does all the work. If you're
02:04 pushing down on this, your knife is not sharp enough. You should
02:08 be able to lightly saw away and get a beautiful slice of
02:12 tomato. That is a super sharp chef knife.
02:18 No kitchen is complete without a serrated knife.
02:22 A serrated knife is like a mini saw. It has these teeth on it
02:26 and it's really good for cutting things that are crunchy on the outside and soft
02:29 in the middle, like this baguette. The teeth on the blade break through the
02:33 crust of the bread and we get beautiful slices. No one likes
02:37 squishy bread. All you got to do is a nice easy sawing
02:40 motion and this knife does the job. It's basically a mini chainsaw. The
02:46 slice is perfect for a bruschetta, pan con tomate, pretty much anything you
02:51 want to throw on it.
02:53 Now this knife might not be a common knife in your kitchen, but it is in mine
02:59 and it's called a bony knife. It's got a thin blade and a pointy tip.
03:02 It's super sharp and super precise. The bony knife helps you separate meat from
03:07 bones with very little waste and I'm going to
03:10 show you how to do it with this chicken thigh.
03:12 I'll take off the skin, push the back of the knife
03:15 against the bone and follow the bone. We go along the other side, the front of the
03:20 knife rests on the bone and we pull it towards
03:23 us. I pinch it between my thumb and pointer.
03:26 I stick my knife through and then free that bone up.
03:30 Scrape a little of that meat back and I'm going to cut out the bone
03:34 and the cartilage and use that for stock. That is a beautiful
03:39 boned out chicken thigh.
03:42 Now my next knife is not technically a knife, although it does have some blades
03:47 on it and it is essential for every kitchen.
03:50 A peeler makes it super easy to remove the skin from fruits and vegetables.
03:54 It's fast, efficient and sharp. Not only that, it's super inexpensive. This
03:59 probably costs four to five dollars. Normally I teach people to cut away from
04:03 themselves and the peeler is pretty much the only
04:05 exception to this rule. It is a blade and you are kind of cutting
04:08 towards yourself, so you have to pay extra attention when
04:11 you're using a peeler and I'm going to show you how to do that with this
04:14 potato. I have a top and a bottom and they're interchangeable.
04:17 So I like to take the top off. If there's any sort of
04:21 eyes in there, that's what this little hooky loopy thing is for. You get in
04:24 there and you pop those eyes out. So do the
04:27 top of the potato, do the bottom of the potato and then all
04:31 we have to do here is connect the top and bottom in nice
04:36 smooth strokes. A potato should not take you a long time to peel.
04:41 It should take you minutes, maybe even less than a minute if you're good.
04:46 And that is how you peel a potato.
04:50 The last essential tool for your kitchen is not a knife at all. It is called a
04:55 honing steel. A honing steel does not sharpen your
04:58 knives. What a honing steel does is if we look at this blade
05:01 under the microscope, we're going to have lots of fine micro serrations like this.
05:06 As you use the knife they get bent and twisted. If you run it over the honing
05:10 steel it brings them back to their original form and keeps your knife
05:13 sharper longer. If your knife is dull and you look at it under a microscope it's
05:17 going to look like this. Round it over. You can run it over the
05:21 steel all day and all night and you're not going to get a sharp
05:25 blade. From this point you're going to need a stone or you're going to need
05:28 someone to sharpen it for you. Grab the steel in your non-dominant hand.
05:32 It has a little guard here so you don't cut yourself. So basically you're going
05:35 to run it over the steel at about a 20 degree angle.
05:38 You're going to need your protractor kids. You want to put just enough pressure
05:42 that the knife is pushing against the steel down on each side
05:47 and that'll give us a nice tuned up edge. If you're not comfortable like that you
05:53 could do it away from you and if you're not comfortable like that
05:56 you can put it on the table and do it here like this. So you have
06:01 three different options on how you can use the honing steel.
06:03 Whenever I set my culinary station up my steel would always be here
06:07 and every five to ten minutes I take it,
06:11 run my knife over the steel and put it back. So let's see how this knife does
06:15 with this lemon. There's not a lot of resistance.
06:19 Cuts through the lemon pretty good but let's run it over the steel and see what
06:22 happens.
06:24 Look at that how it grabs nice and easy. I'm barely putting any pressure on it
06:30 and we cut nice straight through. You notice how I'm using a sawing motion
06:36 when you're cutting delicate fruits and vegetables? That sawing motion is your
06:40 friend. A honing steel might not be a common
06:43 piece of equipment but it is an essential tool in my kitchen.
06:48 These are the tools that I use most often and they will help you become a
06:51 better cook.