By Lynn Lieu
Mastering the knife takes years of practice. For restaurant chefs and cooks, it's about speed and precision. For home cooks, the right cut can elevate your Saturday night dinner by the T.V. to a little more gourmet experience – like, say, you sit at the dinner table for once.
Luckily, Chef Jason Quinn volunteered to show us a few tips and tricks to handling knives.
If anyone can teach us a few tricks, it would be Quinn.
The Orange County native was inspired at a young age by Emeril Lagasse's shows. After a few years of studying chemistry, Quinn dropped out of school to cook professionally. He now has a successful food truck story and multiple restaurants primarily Playground in Santa Ana under his belt.
And his tools of choice are those of the Japanese variety. From the gyuto, essentially a Japanese chef's knife, to the deba, a fish filleting knife, Quinn runs down the basic cuts every chef should know along with how to breakdown proteins.
For part one of this series, Quinn showcases different vegetable cuts from the basic potato dices to how to brunoise an onion.
And while he makes it look easy — he has been doing it for a few years — Quinn still admits, even he makes mistakes. Check back for more knife skill videos with Quinn soon.
