Snoqualmie

ow. yaaawn. i'm tired. but at least my fingers aren't gashed open with onion juice in them. thanks for the perspective, my dear.

The butcher knife is useless. My experience is that you only need two knives - a chef's knife (which is useful when you become angry with the chef), and the paring knife (which... nah, I got nothin').

What's with inanimate objects suddenly attacking their animate masters?! From now on I'll be watching this VME chassis with a more suspicious eye...damned thing just cut my hand while I was replacing a board.

Ow! What's a VME chassis? Wait, no, I retract the question. Clearly it's a computer bit on which boards are mounted, which is probably the extent of explanation that I'm going to understand anyway.

Er... which knife is the chef's knife?

It's entirely possible that the knife I was using, which was described to me as a butcher knife and is really the only one in the set that I use, is actually a chef's knife. You mean the big long one with the pointed, almost triangular blade? Like this one?

Spot on with the description of the VME chassis! The inside of a computer is notoriously hostile (sharp bits of metal stickin' all over the place) since, theoretically, anyone with his or her hands inside of a computer knows exactly what he or she is doing... *ahem*

yeah that's a chef knife. the butcher knife is the one which is more like a rectangle. and goes, grrrr.

Does that mean that my chef's knife was trying to say I'm not a chef?

Like Erik's VME chassis was trying to say he's not a... um... person who knows what he's doing with computer hardware?

Nerd. You can say it. Nerd.

welp, it might have been trying to imply that you should stick to baking, yes.

:P

In order to avoid cutting yourself, you need to know how to hold the knife properly. Do not put your whole hand on the handle, and NEVER place your index finger along the back of the blade. Pinch the blade of the knife as close to the handle as you can, then hold the handle with your other three fingers. This will give you much better balance and control of the knife. This is especially true if the blade is forged, as the one in the picture above is. You can tell because the steel is wide after the handle and was hammered down into a thin blade. Cheap knives are stamped; the metal is a single thin piece from the tip of the blade to the base of the handle. The biggest advantage to a forged blade is that the big piece of metal near the middle gives it heft and better balance (which translates to more control).

If you must involve your other hand in the equation, such as using it to push the to-be-chopped food toward the blade while cutting, keep those fingers curled in. And always move the food, not the knife.

Also, go buy a copy of "The Joy of Cooking." Immediately. I think that they even make a vegetarian edition now. It doesn't matter though, since the info you need is about general kitchen activities, such as proper use of knives.

also, make sure you hold the blunt end of the knife. not the sharp, metal end.

Interestingly enough, what you just described is precisely how I hold my knives (both Chris and Kristen, actually). I can't hold a pen properly, but I can hold a knife.

More importantly, though, cooking's an individual art. You do what works for you. In this case I was just trying to do something impossible, which was cut another slice off of an onion too thin to stand up-- you can run, but you cannot hide from the magic of torque and leverage. My fingers are doing much better now, though.

Bleh on The Joy of Cooking. We have it here, and it's presently being used to hold up a shelf because none of us find it particularly relevant or useful. My veggie cookbooks duplicate all of its helpful ingredient information, and have the added bonus of not instructing me on how to make cream of lamb soup or stuffed vole. Mmmm... vole.

The Joy of Cooking also has an illustrated guide to skinning a squirrel, in case you ever find one made of soy.

Does it also instruct you in how to remove the bones? It seems like that would be pretty tricky.

I...I want the...I want the bones!

I don't think soy squirrels have bones.

And the real answer to your question is that I don't know, because I can't find my roommate's copy.

Well, I was only asking about the soy kind. That's why it would be tricky, you see.