Playing with Knives – A Foodie Lesson in Knife Skills

I’ve had this chef’s knife for a while now, but honestly never really used it much.  Sure it’s a great knife, but I always found it easier to work with my Santoku knife.  Deep down, however, I knew I wasn’t properly using either one of my knives and vowed to find a good knife skills class.  I sent out a foodie bat signal to the Twitterverse asking for knife skills class recommendations.  That’s when my friend Olga offered to teach a knife skills class at my apartment.  Before I knew it, Brian, @floridagirlindc, @frijolita and Thrifty DC Cook were also signed up for the class and a date was set.  From the beginning, Olga was very organized, sending out an email to everyone with a list of supplies for the class and an outline of what she was going to teach.  On Saturday, we all congregated at my apartment, eager to learn how to wield our knives for good.

We all got a HUGE kick out of Olga’s apron and chatted briefly before she called the class to order.  She went through tips for buying cutting boards and then showed us the proper way to hold a knife (she told us to imagine choking someone…I imagined one of my ex-boyfriends).  She checked to make sure everyone was holding their knives correctly before moving on.  First up, she taught us how to segment an orange:

I was amazed at her technique and proceeded to massacre my orange in an attempt to mimic her.  But Olga was extremely patient with all of us, coming over to each work station to check on our progress.  When she got to me, she showed me what I was doing wrong and I triumphantly segmented the last of my orange correctly.  Once she was satisfied all her students had the technique down, we moved on to onions.  She showed us two separate techniques for dicing an onion:

Once she demonstrated the two techniques, we all went back to our work stations and tried chopping our own onions.  What amazed all of us was the fact that 6 people were chopping onions but none of us were crying.  Olga’s method was so quick, the onions were diced before a tear could fall.  In no time at all, Olga had shown us various techniques to cut up potatoes, carrots, garlic and parsley – demonstrating first before letting us loose on our own:

The final lesson of the class was dicing up a pepper and it had us all oohhing and aahhing.  She showed us two techniques that resulted in cutting out the core with little effort:

Before concluding the class, Olga asked if we had any questions or wanted to discuss cutting up anything not covered.  Once all of our questions were answered, we all started munching on some of the peppers we had cut up (and I may or may not have collected our practice work for use later).  And Thrifty DC Cook was kind enough to bring dip and a homemade chutney for us to snack on throughout the class!

I have taken quite a few foodie “how to” classes, but this one was hands down the most useful.  Olga’s teaching style was both professional and encouraging, creating a great learning environment.  It helped that we are all friends and genuinely enjoy hanging out with each other.  Even better? We had the class right in my apartment!

If you live in the DC metro area and have been considering taking a knife skills class, I highly recommend taking one with Olga.  Contact her through her blog and set up a class for you and your friends!