Mastering Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Tools in Your Kitchen (with DVD)
Mastering Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Tools in Your Kitchen (with DVD)
Norman Weinstein has been teaching his knife skills workshop at New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education for more than a decade—and his classes always sell out. That’s because Weinstein focuses so squarely on the needs of the nonprofessional cook, providing basic instruction in knife techniques that maximize efficiency while placing the least possible stress on the user’s arm. Now, Mastering Knife Skills brings Weinstein’s well-honed knowledge to home cooks everywhere.
Whether you want to dice an onion with the speed and dexterity of a TV chef, carve a roast like an expert, bone a chicken quickly and neatly, or just learn how to hold a knife in the right way, Mastering Knife Skills will be your go-to manual. Each cutting, slicing, and chopping method is thoroughly explained—and illustrated with clear, step-by-step photographs. Extras include information on knife construction, knife makers and types, knife maintenance and safety, and cutting boards, as well as a 30-minute instructional DVD featuring Weinstein’s most important techniques.
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
For more than 20 years, Norman Weinstein, a chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education, has taught everyone from first-time cooks to professional chefs how to select and use knives. He has been profiled in Wine Spectator and the New York Times Magazine, and has appeared on the Food Network. The 2003 honoree of the New York Association of Culinary Professionals, Weinstein lives in New York City.
Mark Thomas is a NewYork–based photographer specializing in food, lifestyle, and travel photography. His work has appeared in Stewart Tabori and Chang’s Opera Lover’s Cookbook and Endangered Recipes, and he recently completed four books for Williams-Sonoma. Thomas’s work also appears regularly in Bon Appétit.
Customer Reviews
Very well illustrated and easy to follow
Great for beginners. The illustrations are first rate, and the DVD (comes with the book) is wonderful as well. The book is easy to follow and explains what kinds of knives are useful for what purposes, has advice on what to buy, and how to maintain your knives. And, of course, how to perform various food prep tasks (cut, chop, fillet, etc) with your knives! I quickly learned easier and more efficient ways to get things done in the kitchen from this book and DVD -- stuff they teach professional chefs in culinary schools. The only minor caveat is that the author is a bit overly opinionated on things like his preference for wooden cutting boards and knife blocks vs magnetic bars (small details). Highly recommended overall.
Excellent for Starting Out and NOT Out-of-Date
This is a well balanced book, with beautiful photography and explanations for the cook who wants to truly begin to understand proper techniques of knife skills.
I have taken classes with the author and he is a wonderful teacher and his explanations made me comfortable with even the heaviest of chefs knives (of which I was previously always fearful of losing a finger to) and the book is a great expansion and expansion of this.
(If you are in or around NYC, check out ICE for one of his classes - but do it early, as they sell out months in advance.)
As to the criticism that it is "one-sided" or "out of date" this is not the case - he purposely only focuses on "Western" or continental techniques in this book. (This is also true in his classes - he does a separate series on Chinese and Japanese cooking and techniques) For most Americans, these techniques are all you really need. More "Eastern" techniques are mostly elaborations on this with more specialized knives - but honestly, if you can do it with a 10 inch chef's knife, who cares about getting the "newest" style of knife? 3 or 4 high quality knives will serve you just as well as a host of specialized knives and you don't have to replace them or learn new techniques every time something new and exciting comes on the market.
This book will give you a quality basis for teaching yourself excellent knife skills.
Good skills basics, but surprisingly one-sided
I would like to second a comment made by a previous reviewer regarding this book's datedness. I also found that Weinstein was surprisingly one-sided in his discussion of the world of knives. He has clearly been using the standard French and German classics for a very long time, and he treats Japanese knives like they were some sort of afterthought. He also exaggerates, I think, the special features of these knives, giving the impression that one must develop a whole new set of skills to use them. Is that true? I suppose I don't have enough experience to know, but that's certainly not how I've heard this described in the many other sources I've consulted. This is certainly a fine and very useful book, but I wish I had taken a closer look at it before I bought it; I would have preferred something a little less hidebound.
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