Information on Basic Kitchen Cutlery Knives

Series Summary

The cutler is someone skilled in the craft of making knives; whereas cutlery refers to kitchen and food utensils generally, it is more suitably associated with knives. In cooking, just as in many professions and trades including surgery and automotive repair the appropriate tools for a job make all the difference in completing the task with maximum efficiency and fluidity. Consequently there exist cutlery tools for cooking that have been crafted to be task specific; for example, a chef may use a serrated knife to cut bread and a fillet knife to cut fish or chicken. Having these tools and knowing how to use them allows any cook to prepare food more enjoyably and efficiently.

Are you a cook in training? Would you like to learn more about cutlery and using knives for food preparation? In this free online video series learn from expert catering director Greg Goldbert as he teaches about different cutlery knives such as the chef knife, serrated knife, and the fillet knife. Learn how to use cutlery knives as he demonstrates cutting a bell pepper with a chef knife, bread with the serrated knife, and chicken with the fillet knife.

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Greg Goldberg on behalf of expertvillage.com. You can check us out at www.minettis.com. Today in this episode we are going to talk about the fillet knife and we are going to do a demonstration on how to fillet chicken. This is half a chicken breast. It has already been cut once. What you are going to do with this knife is just trim any excess fat that happens to be there. You can just work around; get the little pieces off. Then what we are going to do is we are going to cut this in half, so you do that by applying a little bit of pressure and again, this is why this knife is flexible. We are just going to cut all the while keeping firm pressure so that the knife slides seamlessly through. When you are done, you have two chicken fillets. Now if you want, you can go ahead and cut them further into chicken medallions, just like that. "