5 Knife Skills Every Home Cook Should Master

You do not need to julienne like a culinary school graduate.
You need five skills that cover 90 percent of home cooking, let
you work twice as fast, and reduce the number of times you nick
yourself while dicing an onion.

Here they are, in the order to learn them.

## Skill 1: The pinch grip

This is the foundation. How you hold the knife determines how
much control you have over every cut.

**What it is:** Pinch the blade between your thumb and the side
of your bent index finger, right where the blade meets the
handle. Your other three fingers wrap the handle loosely.

**What it is NOT:** Gripping the handle like a baseball bat.
That is how most untrained people hold a knife, and it removes
all fine control from the tip of the blade.

**Why it matters:** The pinch grip puts your control point at
the blade itself. You can steer the tip with 1mm precision.
Handle-only grips put the control 4 inches away from the cut.

**Drill:** Hold the pinch grip for 60 seconds while chopping
parsley. Resist the urge to slide back to handle grip. After a
week it becomes natural.

## Skill 2: The claw (guide hand)

Your non-knife hand holds the food. If it is flat, you will cut
a finger.

**What it is:** Curl your fingers inward at the first knuckle so
the fingertips are pulled back and the flat of the second knuckle
faces the blade. The blade slides against that knuckle as a guide.
Your fingertips are physically behind the cutting edge at all
times.

**Why it matters:** The blade cannot cut what it cannot reach.
The claw makes reaching your fingertips geometrically impossible.

**Drill:** Slice a cucumber into coins holding the claw. Feel the
blade contact the flat of your knuckle every stroke. That contact
is the guide that makes cuts even.

## Skill 3: The rock chop

The single most-used motion in home cooking. Chopping herbs,
garlic, onions, vegetables for soup, nuts.

**What it is:** The tip of the knife stays on the cutting board.
The blade rocks up and down from heel to tip, while the non-knife
hand presses down on the top of the blade spine to guide it. The
food is gathered under the blade with each pass.

**Why it matters:** Rock chop cuts 3x faster than a repeated
downward cut, because you never fully lift the knife. It is also
safer because the tip never swings wild.

**Drill:** Pile a handful of parsley on the board. Tip down,
rock chop from one end to the other, scoop back into a pile,
repeat until fine. 5 minutes of practice a day for a week is
enough to internalize it.

## Skill 4: The brunoise cut (fine dice)

Diced onion, diced carrot, diced celery (the classic French
mirepoix) form the base of hundreds of recipes. Doing it cleanly
is the difference between sauce that has body and sauce that has
chunks.

**The onion method (works for peppers, celery, etc.):**
1. Halve the onion through the root.
2. Peel, keep the root intact (it holds the halves together).
3. Lay flat side down.
4. Make horizontal cuts parallel to the board, stopping short of
the root.
5. Make vertical cuts through the top, again stopping at the
root.
6. Now slice across. Each slice produces a shower of diced onion.

**Why it matters:** Cuts of consistent size cook at consistent
rates. A stew with some 1/4-inch carrots and some 1-inch chunks
is half-raw and half-mush at the same time.

**Drill:** Dice 3 onions per week for a month. By week 4 your
dice will be visibly more uniform, and the time per onion will
halve.

## Skill 5: Filleting / deboning

The least-used of the five, but the one that unlocks the most
money savings at the grocery store.

Whole chickens cost half as much per pound as pre-cut pieces.
Whole fish cost a fraction of fillets. Bone-in pork shoulders
cost 30 percent less than boneless. If you can break down a
whole protein, you save roughly $500 a year at household scale.

**Chicken basics:**
1. Remove wings at the joint (bend back, cut through the gap).
2. Cut through the skin between thigh and breast.
3. Pop the thigh joint out of the socket by bending; cut through
the exposed joint.
4. Follow the breastbone with the blade tip, angling blade toward
the bone, and peel the breast off the rib cage.
5. The carcass becomes stock.

**Why it matters:** Whole animals are cheaper, fresher, and let
you match cuts to cooking methods. See also our
[save money on meat](/blog/save-money-meat-without-worse-cuts) guide.

**Drill:** YouTube a video of a professional breaking down a
chicken (there are many). Break one chicken per week for 4 weeks.
After that it takes 5 minutes.

## Sharpening: the skill behind the skills

A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one, because it
slides off food and into fingers. Every knife skill above becomes
30 percent harder with a dull blade.

- **Hone** with a steel 2-3 times per week. Honing realigns the
edge; it does not sharpen.
- **Sharpen** with a whetstone or a pull-through sharpener every
2 to 6 months depending on use. Sharpening removes metal to
create a new edge.
- **Pay a professional** once a year if you do not want to learn
whetstones. $5 to $10 per knife at a hardware store or
specialty kitchen shop.

A sharp 8-inch chef knife handles everything in this article.
You do not need a block of 15 knives. You need one good knife
that you keep sharp. See our [apartment kitchen cookware](/blog/cookware-small-apartment-kitchen)
guide for why one-knife kitchens work.

## The drill that teaches everything

Buy 5 pounds of yellow onions. Over 2 weeks, dice all 5 pounds.
By the end you will have practiced the pinch grip, the claw, the
rock chop, and the fine dice approximately 40 times. You will
cook a lot of onion-based dishes. And you will be a noticeably
faster and safer cook than when you started.

Knife skills are not a personality trait or a talent. They are
five specific movements that respond to repetition. 20 minutes a
day for a month is enough to be competent for life.