# Cooking Classes for the Unwashed



## laxdad (Sep 20, 2016)

After watching some of the videos ThEoRy has been posting, I realized that my knife skills are sorely lacking. Are there cooking school classes designed for the home cook? I am in Ventura County, CA, but can venture into LA if classes meet only weekly. I checked the course catalog at our local community college, but they seem targeted towards future professionals (lots of hospitality management topics, but not so much cooking).


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## chinacats (Sep 20, 2016)

If comparing knife skills to Theory, I'm guessing that about 100% of the members here who are home cooks fall seriously short. Kind of like comparing my golf skills to someone on tour...I'm a decent golfer but on my best day...


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## laxdad (Sep 21, 2016)

All true, but swing lessons certainly wouldn't hurt.


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## skewed (Sep 21, 2016)

Cooking classes will not increase your knife skills any more than watching videos of skillful cooks to learn good techniques. Nothing takes the place of repetition with good technique. Good technique+repetition= great skills.

It mostly comes down to muscle memory just like with sharpening.

So... you might want to pick something and make a bunch of it. Like fresh salsa (easy to give away) or breaking down whole chickens (stock you freezer). Tasks where you have have a knife in your hand for prolonged periods.


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## spoiledbroth (Sep 21, 2016)

to the op... without trying to be rude... I'm not even sure culinary graduates end up with half way decent knife skills. And most of those programs are 2 year+.


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## zetieum (Sep 21, 2016)

This thread (and I) would benefit from a link to the videos!


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## Mucho Bocho (Sep 21, 2016)

Check out my bud Jacob

https://stellaculinary.com/cooking-videos/culinary-knife-skills


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## skewed (Sep 21, 2016)

Mucho Bocho said:


> Check out my bud Jacob
> 
> https://stellaculinary.com/cooking-videos/culinary-knife-skills



Good call. Jacob's video's are really good; concise, clear and nothing extraneous.


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## DamageInc (Sep 21, 2016)

Nothing other than good practice with a sharp blade will make your knife skills better. Learn the basic pinch grip and then just practice as much as you can. After your brunoised onion #10.000, you most probably will have it down.

I never went to culinary school, but a few of my friends did, and their knife skills were no better for it at all. They're still in awe when they see me swinging a knife, not because I am anything special, but because I practiced a whole lot more than they did. Instead of using a food processor to make mirepoix, use your knife and take your time.


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## ChefJimbo (Sep 21, 2016)

DamageInc said:


> Nothing other than good practice with a sharp blade will make your knife skills better. lus1:
> 
> :2cents: I am a culinary school graduate and can honestly say all my better knife skills were learned before and after school. Classroom and kitchen taught us correct technique and classic terminoligy, but, nothing beats the constant repetition of your first prep cooks job.
> Take your time and teach yourself the basics and speed, accuracy and clean technique will follow.


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## laxdad (Sep 21, 2016)

Spoiledbrith: Not at all rude. It's an honest answer. Thank you and the others for taking time to respond.

I believe I need to clarify my original request. I certainly have no expectations of ever being able to break down product the way Theory does in his videos. He's obviously very experienced and talented. It's truly amazing. However as Skewed stated: good technique + repetition = great skills. Technique is what I wish to learn. I'm self taught and started cooking when I moved across the country for school/work. I enjoy cooking primarily because I really enjoy eating. As a home cook, I'll never have the repetitions to be anything special, but I can improve from where I am. 

Agree that culinary school does not equate to great skills, but it is a way to learn proper technique. Professional chefs who did not go to culinary school likely learned their techniques from coworkers on the job. After that, its practice, practice, practice. As a home cook, my mentors are Food Network, Youtube, and a couple of 2-hour classes at SLT (essentially recipe tutorials, no skills taught). That's why I was curious if any schools have classes targeted towards home cooks to teach basic techniques on efficient food prep. For me, hands-on instruction sticks better.

Mucho: Thank you. Those videos are some of the best I've seen. I need to go through the entire series. 

Zetieum: Theory recently posted some videos here http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/forumdisplay.php/12-The-Media-Center. There are also quite a few of his on Youtube.


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## Mucho Bocho (Sep 21, 2016)

laxdad, Just remember that cooking is like having sex, there are a lot of ways to do it.


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## laxdad (Sep 21, 2016)

Mucho, your friend Jacob must not be a member here. He's using a Shun Ken Onion!


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## Mucho Bocho (Sep 21, 2016)

HA, I've given him so much crap about it. He said it was a gift. I told him he could do better, guess he's just not as motivated as we are.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Sep 21, 2016)

I find that while home practice consigns mistakes to your muscle memory too, what you certainly learn with time is an instinct for safety, accidents turn into near-accidents 

I find cutting speed is often not the limiting factor at home after a while.

Getting stuff from and off the board/into the mise in a controlled manner is a far more insidious time sink (that might include getting some spice from a can which involves finding it empty which involves getting a refill which you have to find by rummaging through a box on an overhead shelf after making space on a crowded counter to put that box which involves getting rid of the cut-off pile which involves dealing with a full-again-the-second-time-today garbage can which involves a couple handwashing steps which involve finding that all the towels are wet again which involves getting fresh towels ... such scenarios happen to me every 10th ingredient, and i tend to use 11 or more  And if you're like me and only really building the recipe while building the mise, thinking time adds up... I guess it's these areas where the professionals will always have advantages from the way a commercial kitchen is setup (they're not trying to be able to do everything ever possible in a ~7 square metre (gross) kitchen), and from experience...

And: If you want to cut fast, time to get out the big board so you can afford not to care where the cut stuff falls until done cutting.


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## spoiledbroth (Sep 21, 2016)

LifeByA1000Cuts said:


> I find that while home practice consigns mistakes to your muscle memory too, what you certainly learn with time is an instinct for safety, accidents turn into near-accidents
> 
> I find cutting speed is often not the limiting factor at home after a while.
> 
> ...


Just scrape all the ingredients off the board into the container which you hold just below the lip of the cutting board (may need to shimmy your board up to the edge of the counter)

Practice using one wet towel and one dry for drying your knife and grabbing pans from the oven. In a real kitchen towel abuse is a real nono.

Not all professional kitchen are huge in fact many mom and pop ops work in quite ridiculously cramped spaces with less variety in equipment than many members here have at home... And I'm not talking greasy spoon I'm talking about fancy haute stuff too. I have seen fine dining places rock residential ovens (the kind you find in a cheap apartment)

Improvise adapt overcome


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## daveb (Sep 21, 2016)

Our local culinary schools spend 1 day in the curriculum on knife skills. We get interns (externs?) from one of the schools and if they want to learn they can develop some proficiency over the course of the semester. I've also shown some the basics of sharpening but it's a very small percentage that are interested. 

No amount of classwork, video, etc, can take the place of making big stuff into small stuff.


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## daveb (Sep 21, 2016)

Mucho Bocho said:


> laxdad, Just remember that cooking is like having sex, there are a lot of ways to do it.





laxdad said:


> Mucho, your friend Jacob must not be a member here. He's using a Shun Ken Onion!



For sex? I wondered if they were good for anything..


.:saythat:


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Sep 21, 2016)

@spoiledbroth works far better with square containers and/or a counter that doesn't end flush with appliance fronts 

BTW, why is it that board scrapers are notoriously underrepresented and/or overpriced/ugly (certainly overpriced if you want two pairs) at cookware stores... might be cheaper to just run up a couple spent kiwi nak.... wait a moment ... 

Is there a hidden "whatever you want simmering in the background and out of your hair is bet put in a 95°C oven, fool" in that?  How often I forget that option....


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## b2kk258 (Sep 21, 2016)

spoiledbroth said:


> to the op... without trying to be rude... I'm not even sure culinary graduates end up with half way decent knife skills. And most of those programs are 2 year+.



+1


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## ThEoRy (Sep 21, 2016)

zetieum said:


> This thread (and I) would benefit from a link to the videos!



Here you go dude.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY7LzKnt-Q59iQz01e10rnw

That being said, it should be noted that I never went to culinary school or took any sort of classes. I'm self taught mostly and learned other things through osmosis. My super power is that I can see something once and be able to immediately understand it and replicate it. I would just watch other people do their work then I could copy them. Take a little from this chef, a little from that one. Use the best elements, improve it and make it my own. 

I have learned to do some things through youtube videos. Chicken ballotine by Jacques Pepin comes to mind. Sanmai oroshi as well. 

What's really funny is I've actually learned a lot by watching my own videos. I would watch and see where I was losing efficiency then make the adjustments so I would get better.

The best teacher however will always be experience. You can take all the chicken fabrication classes you want but you won't get as good as when you work for me and I tell you I need 6 cases of airline breast GO!


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## foody518 (Sep 21, 2016)

Another thank you to ThEoRy for the great videos. I have been referring back to your vids recently to get a sense of better/more efficient ways to group product and make clean cuts. Felt like my guide hand usage and how I was bunching ingredients together was really sub-optimal

The recent knife skills prep tasks have been making frequent servings of pico de gallo! And cutting up melons


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 22, 2016)

Just cut up everything you will get better. Never went to school developed knife skills doing large amounts of prep for banquets.

As gargemanger would make large stainless steel bowls of salads. Used a empty plastic gallon container wt. handle. Cut out the bottom & carve a scoop out of it. Plastic would form to sides of large bowl worked well.

At home have a little flat scoop looks like a shovel, use it all the time. Putting chopped frozen fruit in blender bucket for smoothies, scraps for kit. compost bin. I move the cutting board to edge of counter to transfer prep to skillet or whatever.


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## LifeByA1000Cuts (Sep 22, 2016)

It's often my unwillingness to use cuts favourable to a claw grip (which I think does not work with an arbitrarily small piece of ingredient left, does not work with anything that can't be well fixed to a board with light downward pressure) that keeps me from getting good at it - let's keep these cuke slices round and let's even slice up the last cm between two fingers ... cut the root off an onion by accident, so what that will be diced... this 1cm2 ginger cube needs to be in 1mm2 dice... ... and better knives seem worse, they tempt me more for improving finesse than speed, and tend to make me go for a slower fine dice instead of just whipping a mince across (especially when there is the additional temptation of trying for a more even size to get controllable browning/sweating/caramelization/infusion)...

I guess if it's about getting SOME practice, make a nadan beef curry (or a vegetarian variation with seitan. cuploads of aromatics to cut either way.), a thoran style dish from whatever you feel like julienning/dicing up today, a sofrito-based sauce (cuploads of aromatics again), a confit-byaldi style dish, a mapo dofu using Kenji's brilliant suggestion of using diced/minced mushrooms agogo instead of minced meat, a Tabbouleh...


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