Herramientas y mesa
Herramientas y mesa
The right knife, the right grip, and six cuts that cover 90% of what any recipe will ask you to do.
Three knives cover everything you'll do in a home kitchen. Know which to reach for and you'll move faster, cut cleaner, and protect the blade you care most about.
Vegetables, herbs, boneless meat, garlic, onions, fruit. If the task doesn't involve bones, bread, or precision trim work — this is the knife. Use it more than you think you should.
Peeling, trimming, deveining shrimp, hulling strawberries, segmenting citrus, scoring. Any task where the food is in your hand rather than on a board. Short blade means total control.
Bread, pastry, tomatoes, and anything with a tough exterior and soft interior. The serrations do the cutting — never press down, let the saw do the work. Don't use it on anything else.
Removing bones from chicken thighs, filleting fish, trimming silver skin from pork tenderloin. Flexible blade follows the contour of bone. Not essential until it is — then nothing else works.
Splitting joints, breaking down whole chickens, halving winter squash. The weight of the blade does the cutting — raise it and drop it. Don't try to use force. Treat it like an axe, not a knife.
12 mediocre knives in a block sound useful. They aren't. A good chef's knife and a paring knife cover 95% of what you'll ever do. Buy one excellent knife and learn to use it well.
The pinch grip is the correct grip. It feels strange for the first hour. After that it feels like the only way to hold a knife.
Pinch the blade itself — between thumb and the side of your index finger — right where the blade meets the handle. Wrap the other three fingers around the handle.
This gives you control, balance, and prevents the knife from rotating under load. The handle grip most people use puts your hand too far back and makes precise cuts harder.
The claw matters. Curl your non-knife hand so your knuckles contact the blade as a guide and your fingertips are protected behind them. This is how professional cooks cut quickly without cutting themselves. It becomes automatic within a few sessions.
These six cuts appear in almost every recipe. Master them and no instruction will slow you down.
The most forgiving cut. No precision required — cut into rough, uneven pieces. Used whenever uniformity doesn't matter: onions for stock, herbs for a rough sauce, garlic going into the blender.
Stock, braises, blended sauces, rough sautés
Uniform cubes. Slice into planks, stack and slice into sticks, rotate and slice across into cubes. The three sizes cook at different rates — small dice cooks fast and disappears into a dish, large dice holds its shape and presence.
Soffrito, mirepoix, salsa, stews, salads
Chop roughly first, then rock the blade over the pile repeatedly with one hand on the spine, one on the handle, until almost paste-like. Used for garlic, ginger, and fresh herbs that should dissolve into a dish rather than stand out.
Garlic, ginger, fresh chillies, herbs for marinades
Slice the vegetable into thin planks (3mm), stack them, and cut lengthwise into thin matchsticks. Even thickness matters — inconsistent julienne cooks unevenly. Used wherever you want a vegetable to cook quickly and look precise.
Stir fry, salads, garnishes, quick sautés
Stack the leaves (basil, sage, mint), roll them into a tight cylinder, and slice across the roll into thin ribbons. Fast, elegant, and prevents bruising better than tearing. The tighter the roll, the thinner and more uniform the ribbons.
Basil over pasta, mint garnish, sage in brown butter
Julienne first, then rotate 90° and cut across the sticks into tiny cubes. The finest regular cut in classical technique. Used for garnish, fine sauces, and anywhere you want flavour without visible pieces. Requires patience and a sharp knife.
Fine sauces, elegant garnishes, vinaigrettes
Sharp knife first. Every cut on this page is harder with a dull knife. A sharp blade glides through; a dull one presses and slips. Hone before each session with a honing steel. Sharpen a few times a year. The knife that feels dangerous is the dull one — not the sharp one.
Now put the knife to work.
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