Knife Skills - Class Spotlight

Ask any chef where cooking truly begins, and they’ll point to the same place—the cutting board. 

Mastering knife skills isn’t about looking cool with a blade. Ok, it’s a little bit about that. But while flexing on the cutting board is certainly a nice plus, knife skills are really more about laying the foundation for everything that follows. 

At Cook Street’s Knife Skills class, we don’t just show you how to slice and dice… we teach you how to cook better, safer, and smarter from the start. 

Why Knife Skills Are Important

Every cook cuts vegetables. But how you cut vegetables makes a big difference. Uniform cuts cook at the same rate. Irregular ones? Not so much. Undercooked carrots mixed with mushy ones makes for a sub-par dish on all levels—flavor, texture, and presentation. 

More often than not, most of the problems encountered with the end result of you cooking can be traced back to this very first step. It’s not a recipe issue. It’s a technique issue, and that technique starts with your knife.

Here are some of the main reasons why knife skills are important: 

• Safety: Knives are sharp and are designed to cut things. Preferably, the things you cut are ingredients, not your fingers.  
• Uniformity: The size of your food affects the time it takes to cook. The more uniform the size of the ingredients cut, the more evenly they will cook.   
• Flavor: Different cuts affect not just the time it takes for your ingredients to cook, but how those ingredients taste in the long run. Slicing versus pasting garlic can have a dramatically different result, so it’s important to know which cut will deliver the affect you’re seeking. 
• Efficiency: This doesn’t just mean fast cuts, but efficient cuts… cutting properly the first time so there’s no need to recut or redo any of your prep work. Efficient cuts even performed slowly can be quicker than rapidly slicing away. 
• Presentation: Not only do you look like you know what you’re doing, but the dish you plate looks more sophisticated as well. 

Learning not only how to choose the right knife for the job and keep it razor sharp, but also how to break down a whole chicken and perform classic vegetable cuts—from chiffonade to julienne to the elusive brunoise—are foundational cooking skills. 

Among the key knife cuts to know are: 

• Fine Brunoise: 1/16 inch cube
• Brunoise: 1/8 inch cube
• Small Dice: 1/4 inch cube
• Medium Dice: 1/2 inch cube
• Large Dice: 3/4 inch cube
• Julienne: 1/8 x 1/8 x 2 inch matchsticks
• Émincé: 1/8 slice of onion half cut down the equator  
• Supreme: pithless, seedless section of citrus
• Concasse: small diced, peeled, seeded tomato
• Chiffonade: ribbons of herbs. Literally “made of rags”

Knife skills aren’t about speed—they’re about precision. It’s like learning a language. You have to understand the individual sounds (or in this case, cuts) before you can put together something that sings. Perfect quarter-inch diced carrots might not seem thrilling at first, but that discipline? That’s what separates the casual cook from the confident one.

Whether you're just getting started or looking to sharpen your technique (pun intended), this class is for anyone who wants to level up in the kitchen. So come slice, dice, and chiffonade your way to better meals.

Ready to cut like a pro? Sign up for the next Knife Skills class today at Cook Street School of Culinary Arts