1.1.2

Knife Skills

Test yourself

Types of Knives

Different knives serve different culinary purposes:

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Cook's knife

  • Good for most things, such as slicing onions, crushing garlic and chopping herbs.
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Vegetable knife

  • Good for cutting small slices of foods, especially vegetables.
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Boning knife

  • Good for cutting bones out of large chunks of meat, game and poultry.
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Filleting knife

  • Good for taking fillets out of fish/meat.

Knife Skills

You should cut different fruits and vegetables in different ways. Meat and fish are trickier to cut.

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Fruit and vegetables

  • Cutting and preparation techniques include:
    • Bridge hold - used when chopping small fruits and vegetables.
    • Claw grip - used when chopping long fruits and vegetables.
    • Peeling.
    • Slicing.
    • Dicing.
    • Cutting into even slices - e.g. thin julienne strips or thicker baton strips.
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Meat

  • Knives used - filleting or boning knife.
  • Cutting and preparation techniques include:
    • Filleting a chicken breast - we do this to get rid of the tenderloin and skin.
    • Portioning a whole chicken - you can separate a cooked, whole chicken into eight portions: two drumsticks, breasts, wings and thighs.
    • Removing fat and rind (thick skin) from meats like ham.
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Fish

  • Knives used - filleting or boning knife.
  • Cutting and preparation techniques include:
    • Filleting - you must use a different method to fillet flatfish (like halibut) and round fish (like cod) because their backbones are in different places. Flatfish normally give four fillets; round fish normally two.

Jump to other topics

1Food Preparation Skills

2Food, Nutrition & Health

3Food Science

4Food Safety

5Food Choice

6Food Provenance

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