Knife Skills - Home-Ec 101

How To Sharpen A Kitchen Knife

Without any more procrastination or delay here is the Home-Ec101.com Knife Sharpening Tutorial. I talk about knife skills and the importance and safety of having sharp knives, but how do you get and keep your knives sharp? First, let’s start off with a little anatomy of a knife. This is my favorite knife, it’s a …

This post could alternately be called, Saved By a Fingernail, Because I Wasn’t Paying Attention. (only need a bit of super glue until the nail grows out a bit, no actual blood was shed). I’ve been back in the kitchen over the last month or so. I take this as a good sign, as I’m …

Learning knife skills is a great way to increase your speed in meal preparation. The faster you can complete a meal’s prep work the sooner you can get to the fun part. Don’t get upset if the first few (or twenty) times you attempt to follow these tutorials if you take a long time or …

Honing v. Sharpening

Brian says: Honing your blade is one of the main aspects of good knife care. But it often gets confused with sharpening, even though they’re not the same thing. To break it down to first principles, sharpening is taking away material, and honing isn’t. Instead, honing is straightening out the edge of an already-sharp blade. …

How to Peel and Dice Butternut Squash

We’re well into autumn, which means the availability of produce is changing. (Those of you in South Florida, Southern California, and similar areas can hush, the rest of us have these magical things known as seasons that can affect our shopping habits). Butternut squash is one of my favorite fall vegetables, but preparing it for …

How to Butterfly or Spatchcock a Chicken

Heather says:

Did you know there’s a way to increase the amount of crisp skin on your chicken while decreasing the cook time? I tell the truth, you just use a five minute technique called Spatchcocking -that sounds dirty, doesn’t it?- or butterflying and you’ll greatly increase the surface area of your roast chicken. Not only is the surface area increased, but the amount of meat in direct contact with the cooking surface -in our case a baking sheet- is also increased. Both of these conditions work together to reduce the overall cook time of your bird and keep any skin out of the pan juices.

This technique cuts the cook time for a 3 .5 – 5lb bird down to around 50 minutes. Now you don’t have to save your chicken for Sunday afternoon. Who knew?

As a courtesy to vegetarian Home Ec 101 readers, I’ll go ahead and hide the rest of this post behind a jump. Just click more, if you want to see the tutorial.

How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken, a Knife Skills Tutorial

Heather says:

Why would anyone want to cut up a whole chicken? It’s a useful skill to have, I tend to buy whatever is on sale and if whole chickens are on sale that week, then I load up. By buying a whole chicken, I have not restricted myself to one form of cooking or another. Additionally some people in this house are white meat fans, while others prefer the dark and good luck finding chicken breasts at a reasonable price on their own.

If you purchase whole chickens, come home and cut them up, they can be frozen in pieces. However, do not thaw the chicken, cut it up, and refreeze. That’s a big no on the safety meter.

As some readers of Home Ec 101 are vegetarian and others read their feeds first thing in the morning, I’m putting a cut, just so no one is surprised with pictures of raw chicken. You’re welcome.

Also, give my stepdaughter a big round of applause, she was a trooper and helped me take the pictures for this tutorial. It’s not every teen who’s willing to hang out with their stepmother over a chicken carcass, you know.

How to Dice a Bell Pepper, a step-by-step photo tutorial

Ever wondered the proper technique for dicing a bell pepper? This photo tutorial gives a step by step guide.

How to Dice a Tomato

Heather says: Today we’re continuing with our knife skills series with how to dice a tomato. Since I don’t have a photographer or an extra set of hands at my disposal -the latter would totally ruin my frequent “I only have two hands, wait a minute” excuse- the reader should know that during the actual …

How to Dice an Onion, a Step-by-step Photo Tutorial

Heather says: As we continue with knife skills, here is a photo tutorial on how to dice an onion. I did swipe some of the pics from the how to slice an onion tutorial, because why reinvent the wheel? It will take practice to pick up speed and unless you’re making an exceedingly fancy dish, …