The Professional Chef's Knife Kit

`The Professional Chef's Knife Kit' by `The Culinary Institute of America' contains absolutely everything you ever wanted to know about things in the kitchen with sharp edges and things that maintain those sharp edges.The book actually goes far beyond the care and honing of knives, as it is also an advanced course on knife skills. The chapters are:Knife Basics covering history and the range of kitchen tools for cutting.Knife Care, or how to keep the knife sharp without shedding any blood.Basic Cuts, possibly the most important and interesting chapter in the book.Vegetables and Fruits, or how to wrangle onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and other veggies to the pot.Meat and PoultryFish and ShellfishSummaryGlossaryAs a former Boy Scout who took his knife skills very seriously and knew all about Arkansas stones and the proper angle with which to hone a knife, I am really impressed by the level of detail in this book. The Basic Cuts chapter is a wonderful example of how valuable this book can be. Hundreds of hours on the Food Network will cover most of this stuff eventually, but this brings it all together and adds things Emeril never even mentions. Section of this chapter is `Preliminary Cuts', which is roughly comparable to removing the bark from a tree and squaring it off before cutting it into marketable lumber. `Shredding and Grating' shows you how to do the same operation with either a knife or a box grater. The sections on `Slicing Cuts' gives equal time to the chef's knife, the paring knife, and the mandoline, covering both the simple and the exquisite such as the crinkle cut done with a mandoline and the roll cut done on cylindrical veggies done with a knife. Of great value is the instruction on how to do the most basic of cuts such as the Julienne, the Batonnet, and the various dices. You probably have no real sense of the level of detail to which French cooking doctrine goes until you have read the section on decorative cuts of potatoes.This book is an excellent supplement to Jacques Pepin's `Complete Techniques'. Pepin describes a dozen or so different cuts of a potato, the CIA tells you how to do them.This book is hands down the best argument I can think of for relegating your food processor to making doughs and bread crumbs and laying out the cash for a really sharp knife and a few hours of practice.This book is a must for serious amateur and professional cooks.

This book is exactly what I wanted; a self-study guide on how to use a knife correctly. I am an amateur chef and I found the guide to be easy to understand, had good photos, and had a depth of information. An added bonus is the size of the book. It is large enough for all the information you need, without being huge and difficult to flip through.

book does a good job of inititating the user to knife techniques for a someone not attending formal training. Descriptions define the technique quite well, I would have liked to have included more information about the errors students encounter.Overall a worthwhile book.

all most people need to know about kitchen knives

Great workbook for young cooks

Great Book

This is a great book for a home chef, particularly for a home chef who is finally investing in some good knives and wants to learn some basic skills. I like the way this book shows everything from caring to knives to history and safety, as well as to how to go about chopping, dicing, cutting and slicing. The photographs are very instructional, covering everything from vegetables, meat and even garnishes.

What good is it to try cooking if you don't even have a good set of knifes? This book will help its readers understand the different kinds of knife that professional chefs use and how to properly use them. If you are interested in cooking I highly recommend this book along with hundreds of Culinary Institute students who use it as well!!!!!