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)
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Product Details:
Author:
Norman Weinstein
Hardcover:
224 pages
Publisher:
Stewart, Tabori & Chang
Publication Date:
May 01, 2008
Language:
English
ISBN:
1584796677
Package Length:
10.2 inches
Package Width:
9.2 inches
Package Height:
1.1 inches
Package Weight:
3.0 pounds
Average Customer Rating:
based on 7 reviews
Description:
As the number of gourmet home kitchens burgeons, so does the number of home cooks who want to become proficient users of the professional-caliber equipment they own. And of all kitchen skills, perhaps the most critical are those involving the proper use of knives.
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.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Review:
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Very well illustrated and easy to followDec 22, 2008 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-DateOct 30, 2008 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.
1 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Good skills basics, but surprisingly one-sidedOct 15, 2008 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.
6 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Useful, but uneven and a bit datedOct 01, 2008 This may be the best knife skills book on the market right now, but it's nowhere near as complete or as good as it might be.
What it gets right is basic, European knife cuts. Mr. Weinstein is a good teacher, and his descriptions and pictures are clear and well presented.
The section on buying knives, however, is outdated. A book written twenty years ago would have practically the same information, even though the world of knives available to Western cooks has expanded and evolved enormously since then. Mr. Weinstein mentions Japanese knives in passing, but doesn't give any sense that he's actually used them. This is unfortunate, since so many Western cooks have started using Japanese knives for much or all of their work. Much of the old information that Weinstein gives doesn't apply to these knives, and what little little he does say about them is questionable.
His section on sharpening isn't bad. He knows more about sharpening than most cooks, but unfortunately this isn't saying much. And sharpening is an area where a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I belive that any serious cook should know how to sharpen their knives, but they need to be given a solid background in the subject in order to avoid wrecking them. I'm not sure Weinstein's book gives quite enough.
The book does a good job teaching the most basic cutting techniques, but even here it seems a little dated. Since Weinstein's experience is with fairly old fashioned (not very sharp) knives, the techniqes he shows are built on the assumption that you'll be using similar knives as well. So even though he talks up the idea of using a relaxed grip, he demonstrates cutting with a much firmer grip than what you'd use with a sharp knife. And he demonstrates making certain cuts in multiple sawing strokes, where a sharp knife would cut in a single pass. This is all fairly primitive compared with what the best cooks are doing when they have a good knife in their hands. In the end, he's teaching you to be less efficient and to produce lower quality results than what's possible. Which is a shame.
Mr. Weinstein is an excellent how-to book author. I'd like to see a new edition of this book written after he gets some eductation in updated techniques. And I'd like to see him sharing the load with some other experts. For example, he could write on the basic Euro techniques, and have guests write on Japanese cutting and butchering techniques, on knife selection, and on sharpening. This would result in a truly great book.
The enclosed DVD is pretty good, especially on the more complex tasks like fabricating and carving poultry. These skills are pretty hard to learn just from pictures. Unfortunately, Weinstein's cutting skills seem surprisingly sloppy, especially considering he's been teaching for so long. I'm not as big a stickler as some people for perfectly consistent cuts, but I'd think a knife skills teacher would be!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Great BookSep 11, 2008 Through, comprehensive and entertaining. I bought it for a gift and liked it so much I bought one for myself.
based on 7 reviews
