There is no other aspect more important to knife skills than knowing how to hold a chef’s knife properly.
- Start by slipping your middle finger up behind the bolster of the knife, (that’s where the blade connects to the handle). Wrap your ring and pinky finger around the handle of the knife.
- Next, grab the blade of your knife by pinching it in between your thumb and index finger.
- This is what it looks like from the other side.
By chocking up on your knife and using a professional grip, you will have much more control over the blade of your knife, giving you better overall accuracy. What a lot of amateur cooks do, is they hold their knife in a fist like fashion, with all four fingers and their thumb wrapped around the handle. By holding your knife in a fist, you really lose control over your blade.
Your knife should always be held in a nice, relaxed fashion. Holding the knife too firmly will make your cuts much less accurate.
If you practice your professional grip however, your knife skills will improve enormously.
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7 users responded in this post
Jacob,
Thanks for tips for holding Chef’s knife.
Nice article and site. Wish you Success with your web page.
Thanks Bea. If you like the article on holding the chef’s knife, be sure to sign up for our free e-mail newsletter in the top right hand corner of the page. For a limited time only, as a special gift for signing up, I’ll send you a free knife skills e-book. In the book there are tons of full color photos that will help you really understand what it takes to cut like a pro.
FYI: I would’ve asked under the basic knife skills post, but the Leave A Reply area isn’t appearing…
I’m having a bit of trouble with the “keep the tip on the board and rock” method. I think I’ve got the basic technique down and I’ve become pretty comfortable using the guide hand. But whenever I keep the tip on the board it basically just stays there and pivots, giving me an ever-increasing bias.
I’ve tried compensating by giving a slight lift after each chop, but then the tip is constantly being smashed directly on the cutting board, and I don’t want to ruin the edge on my nice new Shun
Do you have any tips that might help me out?
FWIW, I got some help from the folks at Knife Forums. http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/831653/
PS: Love your site so far.
Morlando,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I’m assuming that your nice, new shun is a one of their chef knifes, either their 8″ or 10″. If not, then the shape of your blade might be the problem.
Assuming that you are using a chef’s knife, you need to make a forward and back, pushing and pulling motion while doing the up and down slicing motion.
When you lift the knife handle up, use a pulling motion to pull the blade along your guide hand to realign the blade for the next cut. Always move the knife and your guide hand, and never the food.
Finish realigning the knife to its new position by pushing the blade forward while pushing it downward. Not only will this allow you to move your knife in one fluid motion while cutting, but it will also allow you utilize the awesome edge that your new shun has.
The back and forth motion while slicing will give you much cleaner cuts by basically pulling and pushing the blade of your knife through the object that you’re cutting, instead of just smashing the blade directly through.
One more thing; to move your guide hand, use the “scooch” method. What I’ll do is I will leave my thumb on the cutting board behind my fingers and slowly draw my fingers towards my thumb. When my fingers get right up against my thumb, I will plant my fingers and then move my thumb back to a new position. In effect, this “scooching” motion will allow you to keep you guide hand moving backwards along with your knife in a nice and fluid motion.
Hope this helped.
Thanks! I think that filled in the last few gaps.
Would you say an appropriate analogy would be driving a vacuum cleaner?
PS. Shun Classic 10″ Chef’s
Yes, it is very similar to the back and forth motion you would make with a vacuum, just on a much less exaggerated scale.
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