As somebody from Atlanta, I share his sentiment. Every day on these roads are a damned battlefield against drag racers and crazy people who think you merging in front of them is the same as if you're cutting them in line.
I too have complained about people rushing to a red light for as long as I've been driving, but one day on the way to work I saw something that gave me an epiphany. Although, I believe the majority of people speeding to a red light do it out of habit, I think there are some actual reasons people do this. I don't agree with some of these, but I do think in the driver's mind they think they are legitimate. So, the main reason to rush to a red light is....to have a couple of more seconds to accomplish a task. The task could be finishing putting on makeup, using an electric razor, reading an email or text, replying to an email or text, reading anything actually, or even just taking a moment to center yourself in the middle of rush hour. I would much rather people do those activities while stopped and safe than while driving and distracted.
It's also worth noting that when you're cutting 50 (or more) onions a day, the risk of cutting yourself is much greater simply because you're exposed the the danger far more often - therefore extra precautions like the claw grip are reasonable. If you dice one vegetable a day and cut yourself once every two years, a chef with the same technique would cut themselves once a week.
And on the off-chance you do cut yourself at home, you're fine to just let the injury heal assuming it's not horribly grievous. A chef has to stay on the line for several hours, and keep coming back night after night, you can't AFFORD an injury.
@@FabbrizioPlays Depends on the country, and the work place. My former boss injuried his hand, and wore a glove the rest of the shift. Wasn't a big injury though. Think it might have been a burn, which are far more freqent than cuts. I belive I spilled warm gravey/sauce on my arm once. Took a break and applied some gel. Felt fine, so I put on a glove and kept working (if I remember right, happend a couple of years back).
Yeah, I get "you must be careless/clumsy" from people who never do anything in the kitchen. I have bandaids on my fingers several items a year from knife cuts, but only because I've made thousands of knife motions whereas they don't even own any kitchen knives.
As my dad says: "Race you to the red light!" Also, can confirm the claw saves fingers. I work in a kitchen and have been bumped into during cutting and had the knife jump. I've skinned my knuckles, never sliced a fingertip off. I've also seen people cut fingertips off, and they're always cutting with flat hands while running with the knife. I agree with the idea that cutting slow negates the need to claw. And the other times an injury occured involved either a dull knife or someone forgot to secure their produce. Wonderful video as always :)
I've never been able to get the claw down and I've been working in kitchens for almost 20 years. I just feel like I have zero control with the claw. The only times I've ever really cut myself have been trying to awkwardly place my knuckles around an onion or something.
izzy4bitney I agree with you as well as the fact that his videos are for home cooks mostly and most home cooks have dull knives. Claw saves fingers. Drink more water if you get hand cramps.
@@jimmason8502 I think a big issue for a lot of folks is that they grew up cutting with flat hands and have ingrained that muscle memory so thoroughly that re-learning another way can be extremely difficult. Those people DO need to practice a lot more than someone that learned properly the first time and it can be disheartening. I understand why a lot of home cooks don't even bother at that point, I grew up cutting flat and the transition was slow and clumsy.
I once had this home economics teacher who waved her knife around when teacher, gave me a mini stroke because she was around 30 children. She also like to throw the knife into the air and catch it.
@@sandyliao1394 depends on how close she was to the students. Knives aren't exactly long range, if you wave a knife around like a dumbass by yourself then you only risk personal injury. If she was standing up at the front of the class with the students back behind their tables, well, whatever who cares. If she was next to a kid then hopefully she _did_ lose her job over that. However the scholastic cartels a.k.a. teachers' unions in the US seem singlemindedly dedicated to protecting only the absolute worst and most rotten of educators, so I somewhat doubt it.
there's only 3 type of people who are bothered by someone waving a knife around like this on camera. 1) people who never cook for themselves so never even need to use a knife 2) people who have been attacked by a knife before 3) people who have seen someone been cut severely before
I am a private detective and have investigated workplace injuries for attorneys representing claimants in New Orleans for 10 years. Lots of restaurants here, and lots of restaurant workers. Your take on the prevalence of knife injuries is sound. While I have not done a scientific analysis of this, the issue of "the claw" technique comes up often in knife injury cases. Part of the claw technique includes the condition that the "cutting edge" of the knife does not rise above the proximal interphalangeal joint between cuts. It invariably will in the "walk-don''t-run" scenario. The second issue is that the knife is supposed to stay in one place and rock back and forth on the cutting edge as the thumb of the clawed hand is supposed to push the onion or whatever under the knife. Synchronising this is part of the skill. The knife does not move toward the hand, and the clawed hand does not move toward the knife. Only the thumb pushing the veggie being cut moves along the X axis, and the thumb should hit between the pads of the ring and middle fingers as a signal that you are at the end. This actually allows kitchen workers to safely look away from what they are doing as they are cutting, such as to watch a timer, or a pot coming to a boil. The third issue involves how one holds the knife. You are supposed wrap your middle, ring, and pinkie finger around the handle, and the thumb and index finger are supposed to pinch the blade on at the top of the blade faces just ahead of the bolster. Often people will put their index finger on the spine of the knife blade instead. This is much less stable. Almost everyone I have ever encountered with knife injuries sustained at work just started working in kitchens, or may be bartenders cutting garnish fruit, with a wider range of experience.
I seriously doubt that a restaurant owner is mandating that a chef use a certain cutting method to do their job. The knuckles thing is more of a learned technique from classes or yeah "on the job" or lack thereof. But legally any injury in a workplace has to be reported regardless. I worked at a copy center for a few years way back when tons of printed copies were a thing and we were technically supposed to report every single papercut (literally the side edge of the paper cutting us ass we were handling reams and reams of paper - and it happened a lot) we got but never did. If some moron was lawyering up because they cut themselves on the job that is more often than not the result of that employee just wanting a quick payday for a low paying job than actually receiving a serious enough injury that would warrent a lawyer+investigation+court appearance.
I was waiting for the sign that said "video stopped here because Adam stabbed himself"...made me anxious...much more so than his lack of knife skills (which actually don't matter as long as you keep your fingers).
One of the things I try to keep in mind is "where is that cutting energy going to go if something slips?" If the answer is that I am likely to get hurt then I set up the cutting operation differently. This goes for boxes and avocadoes.
In my limited professional opinion as a chef: Cut slow. Do not try to cut fast to show off. Speed comes with years of practice of cutting slow. The knuckle technique is not just for safety, but also for consistency. It is very important in a restaurant to cut all the slices at the exact same size and do it in a timely manner. This obviously is irrelevant in home cooking. There is a LOT to be said on how to handle a knife safely in a kitchen, and the "claw" is only a very small part of it.
Also with what he said about coming to the end of whatever you cut I personally agree but over time I've discovered something quite effective: turn your hand sideways and use the side of your index to hold whatever it is you are cutting instead of using the fingers, this prevents its from sliding back and also is very safe. Of course, running is always gonna be more dangerous than walking but if you want to do it effectively I would have to say the claw is simply superior and safer and easier.
@Robert Taylor I understand that the way a Chef treats their staff can be frustrating sometimes. I dont want to be the kind of Chef that I had dealings with as a young cook. However there does need to be pressure. Would you ask a drill instructor to be more kind to thier recruits? Do you think that will serve them well on the battlefield?
My culinary teacher once said "to cook, you dont need fancy knife skills. What you need is, to know how to handle a knife. Those skills are only needed when you turn your food into art"
After watching the video it didn't really seem like it was about gatekeeping that much, more like a guy trying to prove that he can cook without following advice from professionals.
As a trained chef myself, when I'm feeling lazy I just throw my onion and garlic in a blender, lol. Ive also never really been able to get the "claw" technique right, it can be pretty fumbly
I'm not trained but I've worked in a restaurant for 14 years. Almost never do the claw technic, it just feels awkward and hurts my hand after too long. I have cut myself less than 5 times in the entire 14 years. Just go fast at the start and slow down as you get closer to your fingers.
@@RikiazGaming haven't worked as anything in regards to food except as a dishwasher, but at home, that's how I do it. Cut fast and just slow down when I get close to my fingers
I’ve been cooking for me and my mom since I was about 15. I use the claw technique. I wouldn’t say I mastered it, but I can use it. And I do so simply because I noticed I can cut significantly more finely than other techniques. Because I can use my knuckles to press against the side of the knife to adjust thickness more accurately than you would from the handle.
THANK GOD! The claw grip has always felt so awkward to me and it felt like I couldn't get a firm grasp on foods. I thought I was just bad at cutting foods or something even though I cut myself a tiny bit once every 2 years
I mean, its a knife, a gun can go off and kill someone a hundreds of feet away, a knife is just a knife... like... don't stab yourself with it... worst case scenario is you like accidentally nick yourself and you got a tiny little cut
@@Stop_Gooning I believe that's the point, a few more ways things can be more seriously harmful, so not following good safety on such a channel is essentially condoning poor safety
Adam, I’ve been watching a lot of your videos lately and I absolutely love what you’re doing. You inspire passion for cooking while very deliberately cutting out and dispelling the gatekeeping BS. I haven’t been this into a food show since good eats.
I always feels like Adam makes these videos in response to something that happens to him. Like say, someone called his knife skills nooby, then he goes on to make these superbly researched video to put them in their place 😂😂 That's the kind of expression he always gives in his videos. Love the channel by the way!
As someone who's currently in culinary school the first part of this video felt like projection for sure. Obviously knife skills aren't and shouldn't be as important to a home cook than a chef, but learning how to do something like a professional would will always help you. I'm not gonna say everyone should learn how to tourne cut (A cut that looks like a football and is only for style points), but chopping things correctly makes a better mouthfeel and takes cooking from good to great.
And ends up with a rant with a subjective anecdote on a case like it wouldn't be safer if regular people learned to do things slowly and carefully, and that even though most cuts happen on top of your fingers when unsupported knife lands on them (possibly dull knife as well since mostly professionals bother to keep their knives in good check, excuse me though none of this is researched data), guiding the blade with knuckles and having fingers tucked away in case it slips is not researched so it's not clear if it's safer. Definitely agree with the notion that the video seems like someone criticized and hit the ego so had to spend a while to try and come up with serious arguments why someone's insult was not to be taken seriously. Nobody actually thinks you're supposed to cut veggies lightning fast if you haven't learned to do so (saying nobody with the assumption you're not a person who takes anything anybody says to heart without further thinking).
I don't understand why everyone who dislike your content points this video as the trigger of their disliking, a lot of people (mainly in social media) scoffs about someone 'cooking skills' not being as perfect as someone else, and you never said "don't use a knife" or "don't try to learn knife skills", all this video is about is you don't need if you want to, you are cooking for you. Dunning-Kruger effect in cooking is really strong.
The reason for a lack of data regarding knife injuries in professional kitchens is likely due to the fact that cooks usually just power through injuries. Most just wash whatever small cuts they get, bandage them, and get back to work. It's not just an unspoken rule either, I took the Serve-Sarvsafe test in high school and there was a section/question that addressed what to do when you get a cut in the kitchen, and the official stance was to just bandage the cut and keep on going. There would be no sense in reporting any of these cuts, hence, the lack of any studies. It'd be like a study regarding stubbed toes or splinters on a construction site.
Plus cooks risk losing their jobs if they report their injuries so that the restaurant has to report it, and worse, pay for medical treatment. So, unless they lose a limb, cooks power through cuts and burns, including serious burns.
Sharpness has to matter with safety too. With a sharp knife, you can afford to move slower and with less force, meaning that knife slipping is less likely than with a dull one. My mother got me a decent knife set this last Christmas, and I’ve noticed that it’s sharper than the knives that most other people have. The same is likely the case with chef knives. There’s no way even my now-decent knife set could make matchsticks like the chef in the video, and the knives that I had before that could barely cut onions. When I swing my knife into an avocado seed, I do it with little force and with plenty of control. A worse knife means more force means worse control means a knife to the palm or fingertips.
It seems that a lot of people don't sharpen knives. I've picked up a couple of really nice knives from a thrift store, because apparently the previous owner used it until it got too dull to cut warm butter, then donated it. A few minutes with a stone and those knives were good as new.
@@russlehman2070 This! You don't even really need a quality sharpening stone and sharpening skills. Just those cheap little "V" sharpeners often do good enough for home cooking. Though I will say that I put a convex edge on one of my chef's knives and it nearly turned into one of those "drop a tomato on it and it falls in half" knives. It was a dream use, and it was just a bog-standard $10 knife from my grocery store.
you said it all, i've never cut myself *chopping*, only while doing dumb fancy things with dull knives... but i tend to "walk" it with my fingertips to get as much out of my produce as i can. my fingernails have caught the knife a time or two and i once had to wash a lost scrap of fingernail out of some veggies. pop-top can lids, however, are expletiving frightening and should probably be opened with gloves, because the back end sometimes gets gummed up, and then the edge snaps into one's thumb when it comes loose. i'm eagerly awaiting the can opener review video, i'm on a binge and i'm sure it's around here somewhere.
Decent and Chef Knives still go dull over time and need to be resharpened. That being said yes it is night and day difference between a $200 chef knife and a $10 special at Target. But that's like any product really - at a certain point quality always make for better high perfomance over low quality+quantity regardless - cars > computers > clothing > billiards cues > lawn mowers etc ...
@@uberfu what would you say is different? Not doubting you, I just haven’t ever laid hands on a knife that nice. My main issue with them is that you’d need to sharpen them with a whetstone and I don’t know any services nearby that do that. People talk about v sharpeners, but I’ve never had a knife come out all that sharp after using one
Chef here, we don’t wear robes but if you see someone cooking at home with a dish towel over their shoulder you can be fairly sure they’re part of the priesthood
Lol, a real chef wouldn't put a dish towel over their shoulder dude, that's nasty, who the fuck taught you that? I don't need your sweat all over my food or plate.
@@Exis247 The towel is not there to be used as a sweat absorber. It is used to clean plates, wipe of work benches, etc. Using it as a sweaty towel is just unsanitary. But don't take it from me, I have only worked in a few michelin star restaurants. What do I know?
RE: "Scale matters" In programming, one must always check which parts of a program actually needs improvement. Say you made loading a file twice as fast, but that feature is barely used. That's a lot more inefficient than improving, say, the startup time if people continuously shut down and restart the program often. I'm pretty sure you're an honorary programmer now
@@superpcstation JS can keel over and die. It has its good parts (I like closures - being able to define and use a function within another function) but it's terrible parts are horrendous! I just don't get how we're stuck with such a shitty language! Typescript is an improvement, but then npm and it's disastrous ecology keeps it in "don't touch that" territory. I thought webassembly was going to be our Savior, but it can't manipulate the DOM and thus can't change the HTML :( At least, not without JS.
I'm an ordinary kitchen cook and I've used the claw technique for years but I've just, watching this video, learnt that it's called the "claw technique". I just like that keeping the knife in contact with my left hand knuckles means I have more control over what the blade is doing. I'm teaching my teenage boys to do it too because I just can't bear to watch the knife getting closer to their fingertips and TBH I found watching Adam's chopping pretty hard to do as well!
A friend of mine sent this to me. I'll just add a few thoughts. I learned to cook at a very high end restaurant and your cutting math to save time makes a lot of sense. But also remember resturants need to plate foods. Sometimes you need a specific cutting technique to make it look visually appealing. Also the restaurants I cook in didn't have kitchen gadgets. So garlic for example would need to be cut in a specific manner to be safe and fast. A lot of inexperienced people may not be able to safely mince garlic sort of holding it how they please. Otherwise you'd have big chunks until they get more comfortable with the knife and how it works, speaking from personal experience. But the home cook has grating tools and garlic presses. Lastly I want to point out your thought about hard round stuff. I actually agree with you that people don't need to know knife skills. But they need to know how their knives work. Often people get hurt because of dull knives. That's the number one injury in any kitchen. Or maybe they use the wrong knife. I see far too many inexperienced people just reach for a chef or french chef knife and leave the rest on their block alone. Cutting specific things requires specific tools.
This was quite an odd comment, im not sure what you're trying to point out in relation to those who cook at home. He mentioned restaraunts but his focus was on home cooking.
@@jayyavid5363 Because you can still hurt yourself using a dull knife at home. Maintaining your tools is not something you only do at work. Sometimes you don't always want to dirty an extra utensil while you're preparing vegetables, so being able to cut it finely is helpful. Different knives are also better at different tasks. You can cut an onion, a cabbage, or a garlic clove with a bread knife or fillet knife instead of a chefs knife, just as you can hammer in a nail with a drill instead of a hammer, but one is easier to use. "Skills" are not necessary, but it does reduce waste, both in time, resources, and injuries.
Dull knives are dangerous? I can't remember I ever cut myself with a dull knife. I do remember cutting my self several times with a really sharp knife, but always only once per knife, except when I was working in a factory where I was using crazy sharp knives to cut smoked salmon, I cut myself two or three times the first two weeks I was working there. So, that's why I think it's just a myth that dull knives would be more dangerous than sharp ones.
@@fukpoeslaw3613 try to cut a tomato or onion with a dull knive. you most likely will need a lot more force and are still likely to just slip of. and this combination is what makes dull knives dangerous, the slipping of with force. also, a cut with a sharp knive is less damaging as less cells are ruptured than with a dull knive.
@@philippa3731 I admit, for tomatoes I use a special knive, with a sharp point and a cutting edge like a bread knife. otherwise I'll destroy my tomatoes. for onions I just use my chefs knife that I got like 5 years ago, never sharpened it, never cut myself with it.
Oh god, seeing "avocado" in that little graph reminded me of when a coworker wound up with a knife going all the way through her hand somehow when cutting an avocado.
I don't think that having "knife skills", especially "the claw" technique are necessary, and I know what you mean when you say it's awkward and feels unnatural.. but I think that when you use it and get used to it, you feel the benefit to it.. I personally (although not that good at it but kinda comfortable with it) I feel like when I started to feel comfortable with it, it gave me more control and felt safer using a big sharp knife.
Osama Qasho' I agree mate. Once I started paying attention to learning knife skills over the period of a few weeks, my cooking experience definitely became more enjoyable. It’s a great feeling to work safely and not spend 3 business days chopping up your ingredients.
@@benresenberger880 Definitely. But that's not to say that I disagree with the point of the video.. it's absolutely not necessary (although it's a nice skill to have) for a home cook. With that being said, I still hope to improve my knife skills lol
I agree. A sharp knife is a pretty dangerous thing to use. And when there are dangerous tools, there should be a "proper" way to use them. The rest is just comfort, with the knife and the way you do things.
@@karu6111 the only thing more dangerous is a dull knife, those 'small hard round thing' injuries at the end of the vid sound a lot like dull knives slipping rather than cutting into the food. Once you have the cut established and the blade even an eighth of an inch (a few mils, like 2.6mm or something) into whatever you're cutting it becomes much more difficult to injure yourself. Starting the cut is the only hard part, and a dull knife takes *exponentially* more force to start the cut.
@@KingHalbatorix Not all of us agree with that dull knife crap. It's kinda like that lifting with your legs crap employers bombard us with. -You're just supposed to bend at the knees slightly because it prepares your back for a load (and why the deadlift still exists).
I like how Adam is becoming the Anti-Joshua Weissman. Adam makes cooking way more accessible and way less about asthetic and more about enjoying the process of making the food as well as the food itself
He seems to enjoy the process pretty well considering he does most things from scratch... which also makes it very accessible because you know how to make everything and can substitute shortcuts where you want. Cooking is also far more enjoyable with a sharp knife and proper knife skills. It seems to be that dull knives go alongside bad knife skills pretty often. Doesnt mean you need them to cook, but honestly if youre a home cook and you cook regularly youd benefit greatly from slowly improving your knife skills overtime rather than eternally sticking to a "walk not run" technique.
he looks good but his head always throws me off. idk why but his head screams "intellectual nerd" but everything from the neck down says "mindless gym rat", like someone saved Steven Hawking's life by transplanting his head onto Terry Crews' freshly decapitated body
He's put on both muscle and fat which makes him look big. He's hiding a stomach paunch and his pecs are flabby. The man needs to cut before bulking more as he's going to go full butterball if he doesn't.
@@leodaly2310 cut after bulking? Is that that water retention thing bodybuilders do, and Olympic weightlifters don't do? Or is it some other more basic thing about altering your food in cycles?
That is the reason why I half my tomatoes first, no matter how sharp the knife. Actually, with a sharp knife it's even easier to go into your fingers, a dull one just scrapes along. And yes, I'm on my 2nd nail now. Already cut myself with it. It's the best training to be careful!
This could be interpreted as like, a general life advice thing rather than just a cooking tips once you started getting into the math of your commute ahah
As someone who has acquired (some) knife skills professionally, I wholeheartedly enjoyed this video. At home I still cut like I'd cut for work, but nobody needs to know any of that to start cooking for themselves ! So get out there and get cutting, people ! (No, cut your food, not people. Not your fingers !)
This reminds me of those gadget test videos that say how great something is because it saves you 2 minutes chopping boiled eggs, totally ignoring the fact that it take 3 minutes to clean the egg chopper.
The claw gives a wide-bladed knife an additional anchor point to stabilize when cutting. You're not just supposed to avoid your knuckles. The blade is actually supposed to maintain contact with the knuckles while you're cutting. Can't stress this enough: wide blades only, like a chef's knife. A utility knife has less clearance and is more likely than a chef's knife to injure you when using the claw. Anyway, by having that additional anchor point, you can very easily slide down along the food and control the width of each cut. Yeah, it absolutely made my hand cramp up when I first started doing it. But so did anything related to fresh garlic. Peeling it, chopping it, I'd get like three or four cloves in, and my hand would be killing me. Pistachios, too, the tasty devils. But it got better, quickly. Chalk it up to muscle development or neuroplasticity (both magically making us better at things if we keep doing them, even if we don't actively think about how to get better at those things), but it definitely gets better with time. Having said that, I totally agree with your philosophy here (this is sort of a cooking philosophy channel, if you think about it). Whatever works. I've never worked in a kitchen and I usually cook for one. I've just grown to like the claw, especially for quickly turning a bunch of garlic into paper-thin* slices. And keep bandages in the kitchen. That's for everyone, claw or not. *Construction paper. Or... like, Manila.
if a knife is sharp enough all that matters is what youre cutting. he pulled research on rounded/ slippery food which cause injury even with proper form. ive cut garlic with it without using bandages and whatever b.s Goodfellas reference youre trying to make. having restaurant experience i can backup that it doesnt matter what method you use, claw is only good if youre trying to save time. You do not need it to stabilize; how the fuck is a utility knife going to injure you when cutting? ust pay attention, i literally have worked in 7+ restaurants, the point he is making is watching what youre doing, claw only needed when time is of the matter
@@jayyavid5363 let me assure you that Goodfellas does not have the exclusive rights to thinly sliced garlic. My reference to thinly sliced garlic was purely about garlic, thinly sliced. Goodfellas wasn't in my head at all. I was thinking about garlic, slicing, and thinness. Since you asked so nicely, I'll gladly tell you how someone might be more prone to injury with a utility knife than a chef's knife when using the claw. Sorry, the fucking claw. Gotta code shift here. Say you've got a chef's knife with a two-inch wide blade, and you're cutting an onion. With each stroke, the knife has to go high enough to get over the onion again, but low enough that the edge of the blade doesn't clear your knuckles, because if it goes higher than the knuckles and you're not careful, the edge of the blade can come back down onto the knuckles. But since the blade is so thick, your knuckles could be an inch above the onion and you'd still be pretty safe. A utility knife has less fucking clearance. Now, when I said "clearance", that wasn't a reference to a TJ Max commercial, so please don't come for me.
I've heard this, but I've also heard that you are supposed to move the food and not the knife when working your way down a vegetable. I've tried and honestly I cannot for the life of me figure out how I am supposed to keep my knuckles in contact with the knife and also slide the food towards the knife at a constant rate. It doesn't make any sense. Do you move it with a little wiggle of the fingertips? Telekinesis maybe? It's so fiddly and horrible.
Real chef here! I wouldn't discourage anyone from cooking and preparing food however they like and I think the true heart and soul of cooking is in the home kitchen, not the professional one. A few thoughts: I would agree that the basic premise is to take things at a comfortable place, speed is not relevant at home. That said, I would also argue that if you are starting out or if you are a confident cook then learning the claw technique is worthwhile and far better than the alternative. I can't offer science to back it up but in the case of potential for knife injuries, fingers splayed open Vs clawed and with no flesh or bone presented horizontally for the knife to slice through certainly suggests less risk of cutting oneself. Yes you could slip when slicing and onion towards the end, but then as you said...go slow and take care. Additionally the claw allows you to move over the food with your claw hand as a guide, allowing for even cuts. You can say that precision is unecessary in the home kitchen but I think most cooks want to improve their cooking and cutting evenly means cooking evenly which means more consistent results. My basic point is, if you are starting out, why not start with techniques that will take you the whole way? That's what they do at culinary school. There were many complete novices when I studied and they progressed very quickly with the claw. It's like learning musical instrument, you don't start with bad technique and correct it later. You start slowly...with the correct technique. Keep up with the great content. I'm starting out on my own TH-cam journey, trying to offer my professional cooking experience in accessible or interesting ways, and admire the passion and depth of research which goes into your videos.
I like to pressure can vegetables every year. If the vegetables are not uniform in size and shape, the texture is more homogenous, and there is less presumption of safety. Being able to cut uniform sizes and shapes is useful for the home cook who cooks a lot, and therefore, the claw definitely has an application for those of us who aren't professionals. Part of knife skills, also, is how you hold the knife, which also helps you reduce stress injury, because you are using the shape of the knife to help you and not relying on your hand's speed and strength.
See this guys comments is how you put forth an opposing opinion/argument not based on facts from either side (facts of how many injuries are due to how someone cuts food stuffs at home). Perfect counter argument! Though when I do cut stuff I will still do it "wrong" but careful, as I rarely cut stuff (Except with a knife and fork LMAO) 🖐🔪🩸 😱 😭 ✊ 🚑 🏥
Yeah! I’m quite new at cooking things (at least all by myself) and I always try to use the claw because, and this is very important, I SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED WITH SHARP OBJECTS! I haven’t hurt myself with a knife yet (my mom keeps her knives quite sharp), but I have stabbed myself in the hand with scissors before, so I’m not gonna make the margin of error any wider but putting my fingers in the perfect spot for then to be cut off. Also, being a casual pianist means that I need my fingers to be in good working order.
A couple of months ago I decided I wanted to learn proper knife technique and looked up videos and practiced and I have found it has actually helped my skills to use the claw technique. Admittedly, I don't tuck away my knuckles but rather rest my fingernails against my blade, not literally up to the blade, hard to explain for me. It serves three functions for me: 1) it serves as a guide for the thickness of the cut etc, 2) I can get a better grip on the things I'm cutting, 3) it's fun! Thanks for your feedback!
@@molly.dog8brooke792 I'd like to point out that keeping knives sharp is *paramount* to cutting safely. When they are sharp you use the sharpness of the blade to cut, requiring very little force. When you use a blunt knife you need to cut with the pressure of your hand, which will make it much harder to stop should anything go wrong (like when your hand slips cutting the rounder parts of an onion, which is also more likely because the blunt knife doesn't "bite" into the stuff you are cutting properly). Ideally your knife should be so sharp that taking a very ripe, soft tomato you can place the blade on top and *without pressure* just do a slicing motion, cutting into the tomato. Tomatoes in general make for a good sharpness "benchmark" for a home cook since it's probably the softest hard-to-cut thing you'll be cutting regularly.
When we learned to use the claw method we learned to always keep the fingertips behind the knuckle and then let the side of the blade touch the knuckle so we could control the cuts easier for consistency. And I always keep my thumb behind my fingers, after years of cooking I found that my thumb is most likely to get bit by the knife. But you are right, when it comes to cooking dinner at home the technique doesn't matter if you go slow and steady. What matters is that you have a good knife and that it is sharp, if the knife is not comfortable to hold or a little dull, requiring extra force to cut with, you are more likely to have an accident.
I noticed on cooking/travel shows looking at 3rd world cooking, they usually cut the vegetables over the pot with a paring knife. No need for a chopping board. As for me, I use a serrated blade for everything (I think it was originally a steak knife). No need to sharpen it; no need to worry about cutting myself, as it is not very sharp. It still cuts at about the same speed and quality as I could manage with non-serrated.
All the best chefs wave kitchen tools arould when they talk. I districtly remember my mom giving me a stern lecture, waving around a rolling pin while tenderizing chicken. She never layed a finger on me, but I saw what she did that chicken >.>
Nearly every professional has a hand full of scars, and are often healing from a slip. Preparing for 4 is a massive scale smaller than meals for 400. Yes, we curl our fingers in, by by the end we have out fingers out(like Chef Marco), and in doing so, slow down for the last few cuts and with practice, it gets faster. And I will tell you, those last few cuts is what gets us every time, that or a dull knife or difficult to handle item, that does an unexpected slip...or your near frozen fingers/gloved hands not feeling properly where they are, or the clam/oyster knife poking through the cut(not puncture proof) glove...or the mandolin /cringe.(man there's lots of sharp unguarded things in a kitchen) Knife skills are learned not so much from school, but from these thousands and thousands of prepped meals. But Dude, you streamline some dishes, change classic dishes with little to no apology with good results, while with other dishes you take days to make, you are a Chef if you wanna call yourself that. You make a living cooking, and research more into some recipes than some chefs ever will. Are you the best? no, but you are not claiming such. Stay humble so you keep questioning yourself, but be brave, question the norm, keep giving us the well researched, journalist view of cooking. Thanks.
Yes, round things, but also cold things, slippery things, sharp things that limit how you can hold, difficult to open things, or things that have parts to remove with a knife, and anything people hold in their hands to cut. It is more about popularity than difficulty. Today it's the Avocado, yesterday it was the bagel, and tomorrow will be instant pot steam burns hehe or whatever.
Adams style is the one ive used in all the restaraunts ive worked in from maine to virginia and now florida. Ive had a few cooks and a chef want me to curl my fingers usually with the same scripted dialogue that Adam mentioned which makes me think hes heard it himself. While I have burned myself and accidentally stabbed myself once shucking an oyster as a newbie-back in the day, ive NEVER cut myself. proud to say it. im always careful and paced (not rushed) and always concentrate. So in short i agree with everything Adam said, having been a line cook. Also his research is spot on, a lot of knife cuts come from a dull knife rather that finger position.
I appreciate your thoroughness and honesty SO much. The internet is a scary place, but you make it wonderful. Safe driving is definitely the way to go.
honestly theres one thing absolutely more important than technique. hell, more important than anything in the kitchen. and thats an incredibly well kept and extremely sharp knife.
I am sorry Adam, but I cant hold this: while your basic argument is valid, seeing how you cut against your own hand is uncomfortable. The "claw" has two parts - guiding your chef knife resting on your knuckles and angling the blade away from your hand. If the edge goes away from your hand, you cant cut yourself. It requires some attention and time when trying to relearn your cutting technique, but you can do it. And you dont have to make the claw, just guide the cutting edge away from your holding hand. Cut like this 👊\ not like this 👊/
I actually hadn't thought about this before when using either technique, but I'm sure it makes a huge difference. I'll try and be more cognizant of it from here on, thanks!
Hmm. i've heard the "claw" many times from many sources from cooking shows. This is the first i've heard of angling the knife away from the hand... Them chefs are holding out safety tips from us normies for their exclusive clubs! xD
I can actually partially answer the question of "What kind of cutting injures people in the kitchen?", and It's cutting with a dull knife. A knife should be very sharp, because that is the function of the tool, the tool being a thing we use to make something more easy. A knife doesn't make cutting more easy if it isn't sharp, and what can happen is the knife will shift, instead of cutting into the food, and instead possibly into you, plus you can add the extra force you are having to exert in order to compensate for the lack of cutting that the knife is doing. This can not only cause an injury, but a very serious injury because of the extra force required, which is NOT needed when the knife is extremely sharp. This concept is actually applied to ALL tools, and that is why if a tool is not maintained to keep it's efficiency it will become hazardous... because it's literally not doing its job anymore. A kitchen knife is no exception.
To a point, I believe this is correct. However, I've got some incidental cuts that I believe wouldn't have happened at all (probably been more like scrapes) with a knife that wasn't so crazy sharp. Not every cutting task requires a super-sharp knife . Throughout the worst of COVID-19, I actually used a somewhat dull ceramic box cutter to open tape on packages because I wanted to avoid hospital visits, and I only used a real blade for packages that were too tough to open (usually made from heavy paper bags).
Not to mention you'll probably be faster with a sharp knife because it just makes things easier. I used to work at a restaurant, and I have a quality, sharp, knife. Whenever I visit my parents and use their shitty knives that has probably never seen a sharpener (whetstone or otherwise) I find it just takes so much more work to get anything done. I don't change my technique at all, but it will take significantly longer than using my own knife
I'm a little jealous of people who have the time to cook at work out, with my crazy schedule I can only do one or the other. So like for the last year I've mostly been eating really basic foods like instant noodles with eggs and veggies added, quick scrambles/omelettes, microwaved meals like frozen precooked hamburger patties, and things that dont require cooking like yogurt, milk, and toast but I work out like crazy. If I'm lucky I get to cook 1 good meal a week so i try and make giant quantities. Adam seems to be superman though, I dont know how he can do his home projects like gardening, cook for the family and for the videos, take care of his kids, do editing and other TH-cam stuff, do his day job, and work out. If it were me I'd be raising the kids free range so they'd probably wind up semi-feral and my videos would have 2000's TH-cam level of quality.
For me, trying to learn knife skills was a way of motivating me to cook more food at home. So it's been a good thing. But hearing friends avoid home cooking cause they "can't even chop properly" is kinda sad
The first part is so true. I find it extremely satisfying to cut veggies fast. If anybody remembers the cutting game from wii party, thats how inl feel.
There's a hilarious vid of Wolfgang Puck behind the scenes of his service for the Oscars post ceremony dinner. One of the cooks was wearing a rubber glove over a band-aid as he was carving a ham. Wolfgang says to him with a big smile "oh the ham wasn't enough, you had to carve your finger too, eh?" xD
In 20 years experience I've never seen anybody cut themselves really badly, it's usually just the tip of a digit because they were fucking around and not paying attention. The worst I did was I had a bad habit of wiping my knife on my apron (I changed my aprons alot during the day, clean apron for lunch/dinner/ any prep with raw meat or flour/fine herbs and spices) We had just gotten fresh knives in, and they were BRAND NEW not the same knives that have been cycling for years. I wiped the blade off on my apron and kept working. My socks all of a sudden felt wet. I looked down and at the same time one of my co-workers just said "DUDE" really loudly. I sliced right into my thigh, so quick and clean that I didn't even notice. I was prepping on line too, so once I patched myself up I had to help tear down and flip and stock my whole section because people don't like to eat blood
Neighbors: Why is that dude holding a knife while talking to a camera?
I was looking for this comment! 😂😂
his family: *meh*
Thats just how Adam is😳
Abdul Ragusea joins ISIS:
"This is why I behead my swords, not my infidels."
Manifesto
That was one of the smoothest transitions into an advert I've ever seen
I'm pretty sure I see this comment on most of his videos :)
The only thing smoother than his Harry's shave
exactly what i thought
Linus tech tips: write that down, write that down!
It was! But I still skipped it.
I love that you were waving a knife around throughout this entire video. That's also a thing people get super twitchy about.
Yo, fancy see you here. Love your videos!!
Good seeing you here man, love your channel
What are you doing here, atomic shrimp? Love your videos btw.
the main thing though is that he was waving it around with no one nearby. its the circle of blood rule as my outdoor teacher calls it lmao
Whoaaa, you watch adam ragusea?
Gotta respect that Adam clearly came up with this premise as an excuse to complain about the crazy drivers in his area.
As somebody from Atlanta, I share his sentiment. Every day on these roads are a damned battlefield against drag racers and crazy people who think you merging in front of them is the same as if you're cutting them in line.
I am both guilty of this and loathe this in others. I love being first in line at a light, but I refuse to accelerate towards a red.
I think speeding has little to do with time-saving, and rather much to do with defiance and power.
@@giulianahejtmanek The only time I've ever been to Atlanta was when I had to drive through it on a road trip... Guess what time we came through?
I too have complained about people rushing to a red light for as long as I've been driving, but one day on the way to work I saw something that gave me an epiphany. Although, I believe the majority of people speeding to a red light do it out of habit, I think there are some actual reasons people do this. I don't agree with some of these, but I do think in the driver's mind they think they are legitimate. So, the main reason to rush to a red light is....to have a couple of more seconds to accomplish a task. The task could be finishing putting on makeup, using an electric razor, reading an email or text, replying to an email or text, reading anything actually, or even just taking a moment to center yourself in the middle of rush hour. I would much rather people do those activities while stopped and safe than while driving and distracted.
Mute the audio and this video is just a middle aged man angrily waving a knife around in his backyard...
But why would you mute the audio
to watch a middle aged man angrily waving a knife around in his backyard
@@pronounced.c1oud you know what thats attractive now that yoi say it
And dead lifting
This works
Of course you don't need knife skills when you've got guns like that, Adam.
Seriously😭
@@picklerick3592 lol I dunno, dude's probably taking too much protein and it's turning to fat.
His head is so fucking tiny, too. He legit looks like Johnathan Joestar.
@@augustovasconcellos7173 a true gentleman too!
Augusto Vasconcellos “Why I train my body NOT my hamon”
"Why i season my knife, not my victims."
Wait what-
Wut
I think that joke is already old
*"The salt will make the injury much more painful, and the pepper will spice things up."*
Gold
“Stabbings, suicides, that makes sense to me.” - Adam Ragusea
Just take the “you suck at cooking” path: throw the onion against a wall
Lol
I agree
Peel the onion's layers and then take a bite out of it.
dra6o0n DisCosTaN
And don't forget to wangjangle is afterwards.
It's also worth noting that when you're cutting 50 (or more) onions a day, the risk of cutting yourself is much greater simply because you're exposed the the danger far more often - therefore extra precautions like the claw grip are reasonable.
If you dice one vegetable a day and cut yourself once every two years, a chef with the same technique would cut themselves once a week.
And on the off-chance you do cut yourself at home, you're fine to just let the injury heal assuming it's not horribly grievous. A chef has to stay on the line for several hours, and keep coming back night after night, you can't AFFORD an injury.
@@FabbrizioPlays Depends on the country, and the work place. My former boss injuried his hand, and wore a glove the rest of the shift. Wasn't a big injury though. Think it might have been a burn, which are far more freqent than cuts.
I belive I spilled warm gravey/sauce on my arm once. Took a break and applied some gel. Felt fine, so I put on a glove and kept working (if I remember right, happend a couple of years back).
a finely sharp knife helps you chop those onions much faster and easier before you have time to tear up. i am so scared of dull knives
Yeah, I get "you must be careless/clumsy" from people who never do anything in the kitchen. I have bandaids on my fingers several items a year from knife cuts, but only because I've made thousands of knife motions whereas they don't even own any kitchen knives.
pov: Adam assaults you with a knife while complaining about chef standards and then devolving into a ad for a brand of razors
Why I silence my enemies, not my weapons
Why i season my razors not my knife
nice glass beach pfp!!
@@arrowheadz glass beach is underrated
@@lumonetic1124 i feel like i might have seen you in the comments of a car seat headrest video
As my dad says: "Race you to the red light!"
Also, can confirm the claw saves fingers. I work in a kitchen and have been bumped into during cutting and had the knife jump. I've skinned my knuckles, never sliced a fingertip off. I've also seen people cut fingertips off, and they're always cutting with flat hands while running with the knife. I agree with the idea that cutting slow negates the need to claw. And the other times an injury occured involved either a dull knife or someone forgot to secure their produce.
Wonderful video as always :)
I've never been able to get the claw down and I've been working in kitchens for almost 20 years. I just feel like I have zero control with the claw. The only times I've ever really cut myself have been trying to awkwardly place my knuckles around an onion or something.
The sharper the blade, the safer you are
izzy4bitney I agree with you as well as the fact that his videos are for home cooks mostly and most home cooks have dull knives. Claw saves fingers. Drink more water if you get hand cramps.
I can say that the claw saves fingers as well. If you cannot do the claw you need more practice.
@@jimmason8502 I think a big issue for a lot of folks is that they grew up cutting with flat hands and have ingrained that muscle memory so thoroughly that re-learning another way can be extremely difficult. Those people DO need to practice a lot more than someone that learned properly the first time and it can be disheartening. I understand why a lot of home cooks don't even bother at that point, I grew up cutting flat and the transition was slow and clumsy.
"Why I season my knife not my hand"
LMAOOO underrated
No
@chu cky And I'm just wondering since when Adam is so buffed. He resembles that kangaroo a bit.
LOL
Therapist:
Buff Adam isn't real, he can't hurt you
Buff Adam:
adam rabuffea
He do be looking kinda buff tho😳
Buff Adam: *waves knife threateningly*
Virgil Missant 😂😂😂😂
@@virgil3836 *Daddy Adam Rabuffea
The only knife skill everyone needs to have is to not wave a knife around
I once had this home economics teacher who waved her knife around when teacher, gave me a mini stroke because she was around 30 children. She also like to throw the knife into the air and catch it.
@@sandyliao1394 she shouldn't be a teacher
Edit: also why does a teacher have a knife
@@sandyliao1394 depends on how close she was to the students. Knives aren't exactly long range, if you wave a knife around like a dumbass by yourself then you only risk personal injury. If she was standing up at the front of the class with the students back behind their tables, well, whatever who cares. If she was next to a kid then hopefully she _did_ lose her job over that. However the scholastic cartels a.k.a. teachers' unions in the US seem singlemindedly dedicated to protecting only the absolute worst and most rotten of educators, so I somewhat doubt it.
there's only 3 type of people who are bothered by someone waving a knife around like this on camera.
1) people who never cook for themselves so never even need to use a knife
2) people who have been attacked by a knife before
3) people who have seen someone been cut severely before
@@Flowku Does paper cut counts?
I am a private detective and have investigated workplace injuries for attorneys representing claimants in New Orleans for 10 years. Lots of restaurants here, and lots of restaurant workers. Your take on the prevalence of knife injuries is sound. While I have not done a scientific analysis of this, the issue of "the claw" technique comes up often in knife injury cases. Part of the claw technique includes the condition that the "cutting edge" of the knife does not rise above the proximal interphalangeal joint between cuts. It invariably will in the "walk-don''t-run" scenario. The second issue is that the knife is supposed to stay in one place and rock back and forth on the cutting edge as the thumb of the clawed hand is supposed to push the onion or whatever under the knife. Synchronising this is part of the skill. The knife does not move toward the hand, and the clawed hand does not move toward the knife. Only the thumb pushing the veggie being cut moves along the X axis, and the thumb should hit between the pads of the ring and middle fingers as a signal that you are at the end. This actually allows kitchen workers to safely look away from what they are doing as they are cutting, such as to watch a timer, or a pot coming to a boil. The third issue involves how one holds the knife. You are supposed wrap your middle, ring, and pinkie finger around the handle, and the thumb and index finger are supposed to pinch the blade on at the top of the blade faces just ahead of the bolster. Often people will put their index finger on the spine of the knife blade instead. This is much less stable. Almost everyone I have ever encountered with knife injuries sustained at work just started working in kitchens, or may be bartenders cutting garnish fruit, with a wider range of experience.
why would kitchen workers want to look at a pot if they wanted it to boil
I seriously doubt that a restaurant owner is mandating that a chef use a certain cutting method to do their job. The knuckles thing is more of a learned technique from classes or yeah "on the job" or lack thereof. But legally any injury in a workplace has to be reported regardless. I worked at a copy center for a few years way back when tons of printed copies were a thing and we were technically supposed to report every single papercut (literally the side edge of the paper cutting us ass we were handling reams and reams of paper - and it happened a lot) we got but never did. If some moron was lawyering up because they cut themselves on the job that is more often than not the result of that employee just wanting a quick payday for a low paying job than actually receiving a serious enough injury that would warrent a lawyer+investigation+court appearance.
Adam: *is talking about knife safety*
Also Adam: *waves a razor sharp knife around like a madman*
I was waiting for the sign that said "video stopped here because Adam stabbed himself"...made me anxious...much more so than his lack of knife skills (which actually don't matter as long as you keep your fingers).
that is freaking me out as well
It's a knife, not a live grenade. People need to calm down.
@@SlashCampable even a live grenade is fine unless you pull the pin lol
when did his biceps get so huge wtf
he ate too much cauliflower rice and frozen tilapia
Purple Alpha sorry what is that, ai have never heard of this “Exercise” you talk of
Baby Gap
He seasoned his biceps, not his food
he bought a smaller sized shirt
ASMR: Buff Adam holds you at knifepoint while explaining how to use it
Why is this funny?
One of the things I try to keep in mind is "where is that cutting energy going to go if something slips?" If the answer is that I am likely to get hurt then I set up the cutting operation differently. This goes for boxes and avocadoes.
"Why I cut my fingers, not my steak."
I almost see a similar joke on every vid of him....can someone explain this or send the link to the vid where it came from?
Quantum Droid he made a video titled somewhere about “why I season my cutting board not my steak”, and people apparently latched onto that
@@kenchen704 th-cam.com/video/02tRxM_1VsE/w-d-xo.html 1
th-cam.com/video/21igfoUrRCg/w-d-xo.html 2
Listen to the man waving a knife around on his front porch, people. He's right.
Louis Delorme it’s his back yard
Well, yes
Especially when the guy's knife wielding arms look like that lol What happened man?!
When the imposter is sus 😳
In my limited professional opinion as a chef: Cut slow. Do not try to cut fast to show off. Speed comes with years of practice of cutting slow.
The knuckle technique is not just for safety, but also for consistency. It is very important in a restaurant to cut all the slices at the exact same size and do it in a timely manner. This obviously is irrelevant in home cooking.
There is a LOT to be said on how to handle a knife safely in a kitchen, and the "claw" is only a very small part of it.
Nikolas Michaelides well said.
Also with what he said about coming to the end of whatever you cut I personally agree but over time I've discovered something quite effective: turn your hand sideways and use the side of your index to hold whatever it is you are cutting instead of using the fingers, this prevents its from sliding back and also is very safe. Of course, running is always gonna be more dangerous than walking but if you want to do it effectively I would have to say the claw is simply superior and safer and easier.
@Robert Taylor I understand that the way a Chef treats their staff can be frustrating sometimes. I dont want to be the kind of Chef that I had dealings with as a young cook. However there does need to be pressure. Would you ask a drill instructor to be more kind to thier recruits? Do you think that will serve them well on the battlefield?
Nikolas Michaelides in woodworking terms, you’re using your knuckles as a fence.
@@EquaIparts Yes. Firmness can also be kind.
My culinary teacher once said "to cook, you dont need fancy knife skills. What you need is, to know how to handle a knife. Those skills are only needed when you turn your food into art"
"Saves you 40 seconds of your life"
Perfect for a college student.
I’m on run
If its a speedrun it will be helpfull actually
How can a college student not know how to cook?
It's not that they don't know. It's that they try to squeeze as much out of a daytime as possible. Study and stuff.
@@clashoclan3371 Because their degree isn't food preparation, obviously.
Adam’s been having too many “pot o’ proteins” if you catch my drift.
buff adam ragusea buff adam ragusea
His man boobs? Surprised he wore that ill-fitting shirt for the vid
He looking like a jojo’s character and thats a compliment
@@unoriginalname7258 DIO
The Truth is here “You were expecting Babish, but it was me, Adam!”
Adam Ragusea: A cooking channel run by a journalist.
Who is looking swole today.
Yes! It's the best, I learn so many random facts from watching his videos 😂
no wonder there's a massive inferiority complex vibe about it all
Looks like it's slowly turning into a body building channel
a journalist with a degree in music
Love you work Adam! Great research and so well explained! You make more sense that so many "Professional" Chefs. Keep up the great work!
woah! look who it is!
you should be verified
Hi chef!
I had to check that this was indeed the man himself haha
IT'S YOU!!! I LOVE YOU 😍
**man rants about gatekeeping while waving a knife about**
After watching the video it didn't really seem like it was about gatekeeping that much, more like a guy trying to prove that he can cook without following advice from professionals.
@@theotherdavid8727 I mean... Yeah that's essentially what gatekeeping is
"Just walk, dont run" says the guy waving the knife around
That's what i thought
@kainoamh He soon will be running if you're his target :)
M.A thinking the same thing 😂😂
+1
Well he's not running
Why are Adam’s transitions to ads so perfect, half the time I don’t even realize he’s leading into one.
smoothest transition ever lmaoo
It’s like music in a classic Disney movie but instead of music it’s an Audible ad.
I usually like his videos so I feel like I owe it to him to watch them. Lol
Lol right ?? In every video too
He's a journalist, and journalists know how to hide ads in their regular programming. Usually they don't even make it obvious that it's an ad at all!
As a trained chef myself, when I'm feeling lazy I just throw my onion and garlic in a blender, lol. Ive also never really been able to get the "claw" technique right, it can be pretty fumbly
If you need them super small, a blender would outdo any chef.
I'm not trained but I've worked in a restaurant for 14 years. Almost never do the claw technic, it just feels awkward and hurts my hand after too long. I have cut myself less than 5 times in the entire 14 years. Just go fast at the start and slow down as you get closer to your fingers.
@@RikiazGaming haven't worked as anything in regards to food except as a dishwasher, but at home, that's how I do it. Cut fast and just slow down when I get close to my fingers
I’ve been cooking for me and my mom since I was about 15.
I use the claw technique. I wouldn’t say I mastered it, but I can use it. And I do so simply because I noticed I can cut significantly more finely than other techniques. Because I can use my knuckles to press against the side of the knife to adjust thickness more accurately than you would from the handle.
THANK GOD! The claw grip has always felt so awkward to me and it felt like I couldn't get a firm grasp on foods. I thought I was just bad at cutting foods or something even though I cut myself a tiny bit once every 2 years
"You're not a real cook because you can't go pkrrrrr."
I felt that
The chef go skraaaa
haha pasta cutter go brrrrrrrrr
@@davidhayward6382 lmao
So, basically warthog a10 are not real cooks smh my head
@@sirboi Warthog is brrrrrrrrrrrt, almost like a pasta cutter
He’s talking about how the “walk don’t run technique” is safer while waving a knife around the whole video I love this man😂
It's not like it's a gun or anything. As a hobbyist blacksmith I often wave around some half finished something-or-other for emphasis.
I mean, its a knife, a gun can go off and kill someone a hundreds of feet away, a knife is just a knife... like... don't stab yourself with it... worst case scenario is you like accidentally nick yourself and you got a tiny little cut
@@Stop_Gooning But is your half finished something-or-other, for the most part, sharp?
@@oscar9816 Usually they're pointy on one end but not "sharp" yet.
@@Stop_Gooning I believe that's the point, a few more ways things can be more seriously harmful, so not following good safety on such a channel is essentially condoning poor safety
"which is what most normies do"
He's losing his sanity quicker than we expected
he's a normie, probably drinks soylent
@@harrisonpowers4265 based, and also true.
well he did experience a lot of early internet, met his wife online after all
Then we must advance our plans faster.
he do be on 4Chan /ck/ tho 😳
Adam, I’ve been watching a lot of your videos lately and I absolutely love what you’re doing. You inspire passion for cooking while very deliberately cutting out and dispelling the gatekeeping BS. I haven’t been this into a food show since good eats.
Adam's muscles: *let me introduce myself*
Basically jonathan
This would be funny witouth the "no one:" please stop using it it doesnt add anything to the joke anymore
@@diablejambe9484 wow he edited it, was gonna congratulate him on not using no one
@@SkyreeXScalabar yeah this whole nobody: thing lost its meaning months ago and everyone is using it wrong spread the message if u want lmao
Mert Mert No one: means no one is saying nothing, or everyone is saying something. While it still adds nothing, Everyone: makes sense.
Adam, you're looking especially swole today.
Ahhh. Now we get to watch the slow decline where his physique shifts back.
daddy ragusea
Strawman Fallacy Jokes on you, he’s got a weight set.
@@CrimsonDragoon23 I was referencing what he says about radically changing weight all the time. He says it himself.
Adam's unearthed my "middle-school friend's dad that I had a crush on" fantasy and this isn't helping
So I see I’m not the only one who notices that Adams shirts are tighter all of a sudden, damn pot o protein!!!
He's looking thicc
yeah dem pecs lookin huge
bermberp dem guns 💪🏻 too
The analogies here are incredible, you make so many broader points in your video that feel very fatherly and wise. Lots to think abt here
5:37 that was the smoothest transition to an ad I’ve ever seen
Yeah, it felt organic and like it just happened. I actually watched the ad instead of skipping it for that reason.
I think Adam is usually pretty good at seamlessly transitioning into his ads
Smooth like the shave he gets from Harry's shave clu-- Wait. What am I doing?
Buff adam waving around a knife is truly terrifying
I always feels like Adam makes these videos in response to something that happens to him. Like say, someone called his knife skills nooby, then he goes on to make these superbly researched video to put them in their place 😂😂 That's the kind of expression he always gives in his videos. Love the channel by the way!
Yeah all his videos have a "I'm not wrong, you're wrong, and here's why!" kind of vibe, and I like it haha
100% 😂
As someone who's currently in culinary school the first part of this video felt like projection for sure. Obviously knife skills aren't and shouldn't be as important to a home cook than a chef, but learning how to do something like a professional would will always help you. I'm not gonna say everyone should learn how to tourne cut (A cut that looks like a football and is only for style points), but chopping things correctly makes a better mouthfeel and takes cooking from good to great.
And ends up with a rant with a subjective anecdote on a case like it wouldn't be safer if regular people learned to do things slowly and carefully, and that even though most cuts happen on top of your fingers when unsupported knife lands on them (possibly dull knife as well since mostly professionals bother to keep their knives in good check, excuse me though none of this is researched data), guiding the blade with knuckles and having fingers tucked away in case it slips is not researched so it's not clear if it's safer.
Definitely agree with the notion that the video seems like someone criticized and hit the ego so had to spend a while to try and come up with serious arguments why someone's insult was not to be taken seriously. Nobody actually thinks you're supposed to cut veggies lightning fast if you haven't learned to do so (saying nobody with the assumption you're not a person who takes anything anybody says to heart without further thinking).
I don't understand why everyone who dislike your content points this video as the trigger of their disliking, a lot of people (mainly in social media) scoffs about someone 'cooking skills' not being as perfect as someone else, and you never said "don't use a knife" or "don't try to learn knife skills", all this video is about is you don't need if you want to, you are cooking for you. Dunning-Kruger effect in cooking is really strong.
Adam: "Noooo you cant just mow through your food like that its dangerous, walk dont run!!"
Me: Haha Chefs Knife go brrrrrr
I cannot express how much I love this comment
LMFAO
Lmfao
Lmfao
Lmfao
i'll still try to improve my knife skills even though im not a pro chef because i find it very satisfying to cut something well and very quickly.
Adam would say something like "you do you friend" and he would be right
I agree. I just love knives and just chopping stuff.
@@apricot_enjoyer YTP Adam on the other hand ...
It doesn't take that long too get the basics of it going, and it's safer. This video is just one massive cope.
The reason for a lack of data regarding knife injuries in professional kitchens is likely due to the fact that cooks usually just power through injuries. Most just wash whatever small cuts they get, bandage them, and get back to work. It's not just an unspoken rule either, I took the Serve-Sarvsafe test in high school and there was a section/question that addressed what to do when you get a cut in the kitchen, and the official stance was to just bandage the cut and keep on going. There would be no sense in reporting any of these cuts, hence, the lack of any studies. It'd be like a study regarding stubbed toes or splinters on a construction site.
Bandaid the cut and put on a glove iirc from my servesafe test
Plus cooks risk losing their jobs if they report their injuries so that the restaurant has to report it, and worse, pay for medical treatment. So, unless they lose a limb, cooks power through cuts and burns, including serious burns.
Sharpness has to matter with safety too. With a sharp knife, you can afford to move slower and with less force, meaning that knife slipping is less likely than with a dull one. My mother got me a decent knife set this last Christmas, and I’ve noticed that it’s sharper than the knives that most other people have. The same is likely the case with chef knives. There’s no way even my now-decent knife set could make matchsticks like the chef in the video, and the knives that I had before that could barely cut onions.
When I swing my knife into an avocado seed, I do it with little force and with plenty of control. A worse knife means more force means worse control means a knife to the palm or fingertips.
It seems that a lot of people don't sharpen knives. I've picked up a couple of really nice knives from a thrift store, because apparently the previous owner used it until it got too dull to cut warm butter, then donated it. A few minutes with a stone and those knives were good as new.
@@russlehman2070 This! You don't even really need a quality sharpening stone and sharpening skills. Just those cheap little "V" sharpeners often do good enough for home cooking. Though I will say that I put a convex edge on one of my chef's knives and it nearly turned into one of those "drop a tomato on it and it falls in half" knives. It was a dream use, and it was just a bog-standard $10 knife from my grocery store.
you said it all, i've never cut myself *chopping*, only while doing dumb fancy things with dull knives... but i tend to "walk" it with my fingertips to get as much out of my produce as i can. my fingernails have caught the knife a time or two and i once had to wash a lost scrap of fingernail out of some veggies.
pop-top can lids, however, are expletiving frightening and should probably be opened with gloves, because the back end sometimes gets gummed up, and then the edge snaps into one's thumb when it comes loose.
i'm eagerly awaiting the can opener review video, i'm on a binge and i'm sure it's around here somewhere.
Decent and Chef Knives still go dull over time and need to be resharpened. That being said yes it is night and day difference between a $200 chef knife and a $10 special at Target. But that's like any product really - at a certain point quality always make for better high perfomance over low quality+quantity regardless - cars > computers > clothing > billiards cues > lawn mowers etc ...
@@uberfu what would you say is different? Not doubting you, I just haven’t ever laid hands on a knife that nice. My main issue with them is that you’d need to sharpen them with a whetstone and I don’t know any services nearby that do that. People talk about v sharpeners, but I’ve never had a knife come out all that sharp after using one
Chef here, we don’t wear robes but if you see someone cooking at home with a dish towel over their shoulder you can be fairly sure they’re part of the priesthood
Lol, a real chef wouldn't put a dish towel over their shoulder dude, that's nasty, who the fuck taught you that? I don't need your sweat all over my food or plate.
@@BRTxNL the towel stops the sweat. its a towel not a rubber sheet.
@@Exis247 The towel is not there to be used as a sweat absorber. It is used to clean plates, wipe of work benches, etc. Using it as a sweaty towel is just unsanitary. But don't take it from me, I have only worked in a few michelin star restaurants. What do I know?
@@BRTxNL you learn something new every second lol.
@@BRTxNL You don't speak like the kind of person who's worked at a Michelin star restaurant. I'm gonna elect to believe you're making it up.
Jesus, that first shot of Adam caught me off guard.
He looks like a Part 1 JoJo character.
Augusto Vasconcellos He’s turning me on
@@ColePalmerEnjoyer what the fu-
*Pillar man theme plays*
Nguyen Duc Hung I feel you
THICC
RE: "Scale matters"
In programming, one must always check which parts of a program actually needs improvement. Say you made loading a file twice as fast, but that feature is barely used. That's a lot more inefficient than improving, say, the startup time if people continuously shut down and restart the program often.
I'm pretty sure you're an honorary programmer now
And you're a real programmer if there's a language you passionately hate (aham Javascript aham)
@@superpcstation Unpopular opinion: aham Python aham. The vastly different syntax from what I am used to makes me sad :(
@@superpcstation JS can keel over and die. It has its good parts (I like closures - being able to define and use a function within another function) but it's terrible parts are horrendous!
I just don't get how we're stuck with such a shitty language! Typescript is an improvement, but then npm and it's disastrous ecology keeps it in "don't touch that" territory.
I thought webassembly was going to be our Savior, but it can't manipulate the DOM and thus can't change the HTML :(
At least, not without JS.
@@chase2496 I don't like Python because it's not statically typed. I WANT MY TYPES, DANGIT!
Put it simply Big(O)
I'm an ordinary kitchen cook and I've used the claw technique for years but I've just, watching this video, learnt that it's called the "claw technique". I just like that keeping the knife in contact with my left hand knuckles means I have more control over what the blade is doing. I'm teaching my teenage boys to do it too because I just can't bear to watch the knife getting closer to their fingertips and TBH I found watching Adam's chopping pretty hard to do as well!
The only knife skill I possess is holding the correct part
Dash I laughed way to hard😂
The blade right?
What the bit that makes red stuff come out of my hand
I made that mistake once actually, but its usually a mistake you only make once, if ever.
Dry joke
A friend of mine sent this to me. I'll just add a few thoughts. I learned to cook at a very high end restaurant and your cutting math to save time makes a lot of sense. But also remember resturants need to plate foods. Sometimes you need a specific cutting technique to make it look visually appealing.
Also the restaurants I cook in didn't have kitchen gadgets. So garlic for example would need to be cut in a specific manner to be safe and fast. A lot of inexperienced people may not be able to safely mince garlic sort of holding it how they please. Otherwise you'd have big chunks until they get more comfortable with the knife and how it works, speaking from personal experience. But the home cook has grating tools and garlic presses.
Lastly I want to point out your thought about hard round stuff. I actually agree with you that people don't need to know knife skills. But they need to know how their knives work. Often people get hurt because of dull knives. That's the number one injury in any kitchen. Or maybe they use the wrong knife. I see far too many inexperienced people just reach for a chef or french chef knife and leave the rest on their block alone. Cutting specific things requires specific tools.
This was quite an odd comment, im not sure what you're trying to point out in relation to those who cook at home. He mentioned restaraunts but his focus was on home cooking.
@@jayyavid5363 Because you can still hurt yourself using a dull knife at home. Maintaining your tools is not something you only do at work. Sometimes you don't always want to dirty an extra utensil while you're preparing vegetables, so being able to cut it finely is helpful. Different knives are also better at different tasks. You can cut an onion, a cabbage, or a garlic clove with a bread knife or fillet knife instead of a chefs knife, just as you can hammer in a nail with a drill instead of a hammer, but one is easier to use.
"Skills" are not necessary, but it does reduce waste, both in time, resources, and injuries.
Dull knives are dangerous? I can't remember I ever cut myself with a dull knife. I do remember cutting my self several times with a really sharp knife, but always only once per knife, except when I was working in a factory where I was using crazy sharp knives to cut smoked salmon, I cut myself two or three times the first two weeks I was working there.
So, that's why I think it's just a myth that dull knives would be more dangerous than sharp ones.
@@fukpoeslaw3613 try to cut a tomato or onion with a dull knive. you most likely will need a lot more force and are still likely to just slip of. and this combination is what makes dull knives dangerous, the slipping of with force. also, a cut with a sharp knive is less damaging as less cells are ruptured than with a dull knive.
@@philippa3731 I admit, for tomatoes I use a special knive, with a sharp point and a cutting edge like a bread knife. otherwise I'll destroy my tomatoes. for onions I just use my chefs knife that I got like 5 years ago, never sharpened it, never cut myself with it.
I feel ambushed every time the ad starts on this channel
Why
@@samuelsanguino8422 Because the transitions are so smooth.
The segues are downright DIABOLICAL.
Oh god, seeing "avocado" in that little graph reminded me of when a coworker wound up with a knife going all the way through her hand somehow when cutting an avocado.
I don't think that having "knife skills", especially "the claw" technique are necessary, and I know what you mean when you say it's awkward and feels unnatural.. but I think that when you use it and get used to it, you feel the benefit to it.. I personally (although not that good at it but kinda comfortable with it) I feel like when I started to feel comfortable with it, it gave me more control and felt safer using a big sharp knife.
Osama Qasho' I agree mate. Once I started paying attention to learning knife skills over the period of a few weeks, my cooking experience definitely became more enjoyable. It’s a great feeling to work safely and not spend 3 business days chopping up your ingredients.
@@benresenberger880 Definitely. But that's not to say that I disagree with the point of the video.. it's absolutely not necessary (although it's a nice skill to have) for a home cook. With that being said, I still hope to improve my knife skills lol
I agree. A sharp knife is a pretty dangerous thing to use. And when there are dangerous tools, there should be a "proper" way to use them. The rest is just comfort, with the knife and the way you do things.
@@karu6111 the only thing more dangerous is a dull knife, those 'small hard round thing' injuries at the end of the vid sound a lot like dull knives slipping rather than cutting into the food. Once you have the cut established and the blade even an eighth of an inch (a few mils, like 2.6mm or something) into whatever you're cutting it becomes much more difficult to injure yourself. Starting the cut is the only hard part, and a dull knife takes *exponentially* more force to start the cut.
@@KingHalbatorix Not all of us agree with that dull knife crap. It's kinda like that lifting with your legs crap employers bombard us with. -You're just supposed to bend at the knees slightly because it prepares your back for a load (and why the deadlift still exists).
Dude seriously he has the smoothest transitions to sponsors. It's kinda amazing
Yo, no one better than Linus
Adam's better than Linus
He sale it like he's talking to a friend. If you buy it, good. If you don't, no big deal.
I'm starting to think that this guy has a background in journalism and radio
I didn't even realise I was watching advert until it was over
I want a montage of all the veggies you've cut in real time
So relaxing lol
Adam please do this. All the veggie cutting footage you have. One video. Normal speed.
WhiteNight yes please
I need something to fall asleep too pls Adam
yes please
Shoutouts to Jay, they look really wholesome together
My boy Adam bringing quick maths with his buff body now.
quick mafs *
Meh.... man boobs
But look at his arms!
All flab
Hanro Roos dad bod
this video is just 13 minutes of anxiety waiting for Adam to stop waving the knife around
Adam's right hand looks bigger than his left...
*_Oh no_*
*_O H N O_*
Oh YES :)
Why i beat my meat and NOT my steak.
Der Koommer
It's his wine-pouring and season-my-kitchen-utensils hand. Honestly, i expected it to be bigger (make a joke about that sentense, i dare ya).
Him waving the knife around frightened me
I like the way he calmly says
"Stabbings, Suicide, That makes sense to me"
I am scared that he was going to accidently cut himself by waving that knife around.
He probably learned that from Marco Pierre White
I like how Adam is becoming the Anti-Joshua Weissman. Adam makes cooking way more accessible and way less about asthetic and more about enjoying the process of making the food as well as the food itself
Josh Weissman is total cringe and his videos suck
kellerdood32 he was good before
@@username11011 admittedly I did follow him around May 2019. He did some good videos on fermentation and also pasta sauce. He just got annoying
He seems to enjoy the process pretty well considering he does most things from scratch... which also makes it very accessible because you know how to make everything and can substitute shortcuts where you want. Cooking is also far more enjoyable with a sharp knife and proper knife skills. It seems to be that dull knives go alongside bad knife skills pretty often. Doesnt mean you need them to cook, but honestly if youre a home cook and you cook regularly youd benefit greatly from slowly improving your knife skills overtime rather than eternally sticking to a "walk not run" technique.
You guys should all go watch alex
God I love this channel. The part about how some cooking shows don’t show you all the steps is so on point
I’m still wondering how strong Adam is. He looks kinda buff.
he looks good but his head always throws me off. idk why but his head screams "intellectual nerd" but everything from the neck down says "mindless gym rat", like someone saved Steven Hawking's life by transplanting his head onto Terry Crews' freshly decapitated body
@@arthas640 never have i agreed with something so much i disagree with
@@arthas640 its actually because hes got a skinny neck that gives that effect
@@arthas640 omg lol
he's got a lot more time to work out ever since he quit his full time job for this channel
Bro wtf he’s huge now when did this happen I’m so baffled right now 😂
shortly after announcing quitting full time job to for this channel.
He's put on both muscle and fat which makes him look big. He's hiding a stomach paunch and his pecs are flabby. The man needs to cut before bulking more as he's going to go full butterball if he doesn't.
leo daly how can you so easily tell? Not saying this in an accusatory tone, just curious
@@joshualee3438 Because I chubeed up and bulked up in the exact same way before learning to cut after bulking.
@@leodaly2310 cut after bulking? Is that that water retention thing bodybuilders do, and Olympic weightlifters don't do? Or is it some other more basic thing about altering your food in cycles?
from my experience the most dangerous part of cutting something round isnt it rolling, but the knife slipping off the angle of the rounded object
I'd bet my fingers that the ones failing at avocado pit removal are doing so against their palm and jamming a barely sharp knife against the pit.
I cut myself for the first time 2 days ago by the knife slipping off a pepper. I went in 1/3 of the way into my thumb. Yikes.
When the top layer of the onion peels off and guides the knife into your fingers. 😬
@@djordjenikolic9144 Yikes, how are you recovering?
That is the reason why I half my tomatoes first, no matter how sharp the knife.
Actually, with a sharp knife it's even easier to go into your fingers, a dull one just scrapes along. And yes, I'm on my 2nd nail now. Already cut myself with it. It's the best training to be careful!
I love the way he addresses everything so clearly
This could be interpreted as like, a general life advice thing rather than just a cooking tips once you started getting into the math of your commute ahah
As someone who has acquired (some) knife skills professionally, I wholeheartedly enjoyed this video. At home I still cut like I'd cut for work, but nobody needs to know any of that to start cooking for themselves ! So get out there and get cutting, people ! (No, cut your food, not people. Not your fingers !)
Very important comma.
This guy is getting wide like Kylo Ren
Like ADAM driver*
i love this
*like Ben Swolo
Nah jonathan joestar
fuck
This guys skilled transitions into sponsor-ads are unmatched
This reminds me of those gadget test videos that say how great something is because it saves you 2 minutes chopping boiled eggs, totally ignoring the fact that it take 3 minutes to clean the egg chopper.
"You don't need nife skills"
BUT I WANT THEM ADAM. I WANT THEM
Nife? Ok buddy.
@@legionary1656 maybe not his first language and you didn't even try to correct him.
There is a silent K so it is spilled knife
@@legionary1656 lol yeah I made a spelling mistake oh well. Typos happen
@@Starkk9 "Spilled" Imagine trying to correct someone when you cannot even spell
Nife nice
The claw gives a wide-bladed knife an additional anchor point to stabilize when cutting. You're not just supposed to avoid your knuckles. The blade is actually supposed to maintain contact with the knuckles while you're cutting. Can't stress this enough: wide blades only, like a chef's knife. A utility knife has less clearance and is more likely than a chef's knife to injure you when using the claw. Anyway, by having that additional anchor point, you can very easily slide down along the food and control the width of each cut.
Yeah, it absolutely made my hand cramp up when I first started doing it. But so did anything related to fresh garlic. Peeling it, chopping it, I'd get like three or four cloves in, and my hand would be killing me. Pistachios, too, the tasty devils. But it got better, quickly. Chalk it up to muscle development or neuroplasticity (both magically making us better at things if we keep doing them, even if we don't actively think about how to get better at those things), but it definitely gets better with time.
Having said that, I totally agree with your philosophy here (this is sort of a cooking philosophy channel, if you think about it). Whatever works. I've never worked in a kitchen and I usually cook for one. I've just grown to like the claw, especially for quickly turning a bunch of garlic into paper-thin* slices. And keep bandages in the kitchen. That's for everyone, claw or not.
*Construction paper. Or... like, Manila.
if a knife is sharp enough all that matters is what youre cutting. he pulled research on rounded/ slippery food which cause injury even with proper form. ive cut garlic with it without using bandages and whatever b.s Goodfellas reference youre trying to make.
having restaurant experience i can backup that it doesnt matter what method you use, claw is only good if youre trying to save time. You do not need it to stabilize; how the fuck is a utility knife going to injure you when cutting? ust pay attention, i literally have worked in 7+ restaurants, the point he is making is watching what youre doing, claw only needed when time is of the matter
@@jayyavid5363 let me assure you that Goodfellas does not have the exclusive rights to thinly sliced garlic. My reference to thinly sliced garlic was purely about garlic, thinly sliced. Goodfellas wasn't in my head at all. I was thinking about garlic, slicing, and thinness.
Since you asked so nicely, I'll gladly tell you how someone might be more prone to injury with a utility knife than a chef's knife when using the claw. Sorry, the fucking claw. Gotta code shift here.
Say you've got a chef's knife with a two-inch wide blade, and you're cutting an onion. With each stroke, the knife has to go high enough to get over the onion again, but low enough that the edge of the blade doesn't clear your knuckles, because if it goes higher than the knuckles and you're not careful, the edge of the blade can come back down onto the knuckles. But since the blade is so thick, your knuckles could be an inch above the onion and you'd still be pretty safe. A utility knife has less fucking clearance.
Now, when I said "clearance", that wasn't a reference to a TJ Max commercial, so please don't come for me.
@@tom_something ok
I've heard this, but I've also heard that you are supposed to move the food and not the knife when working your way down a vegetable. I've tried and honestly I cannot for the life of me figure out how I am supposed to keep my knuckles in contact with the knife and also slide the food towards the knife at a constant rate. It doesn't make any sense. Do you move it with a little wiggle of the fingertips? Telekinesis maybe? It's so fiddly and horrible.
@@KylerGreer Yeah, I can't "move the food and not the knife" either. My curl guides the knife along the food, not the other way around.
I swear to god this guys ad reads are so subtle there like an ambush of ads
Real chef here! I wouldn't discourage anyone from cooking and preparing food however they like and I think the true heart and soul of cooking is in the home kitchen, not the professional one.
A few thoughts: I would agree that the basic premise is to take things at a comfortable place, speed is not relevant at home. That said, I would also argue that if you are starting out or if you are a confident cook then learning the claw technique is worthwhile and far better than the alternative. I can't offer science to back it up but in the case of potential for knife injuries, fingers splayed open Vs clawed and with no flesh or bone presented horizontally for the knife to slice through certainly suggests less risk of cutting oneself. Yes you could slip when slicing and onion towards the end, but then as you said...go slow and take care.
Additionally the claw allows you to move over the food with your claw hand as a guide, allowing for even cuts. You can say that precision is unecessary in the home kitchen but I think most cooks want to improve their cooking and cutting evenly means cooking evenly which means more consistent results.
My basic point is, if you are starting out, why not start with techniques that will take you the whole way? That's what they do at culinary school. There were many complete novices when I studied and they progressed very quickly with the claw.
It's like learning musical instrument, you don't start with bad technique and correct it later. You start slowly...with the correct technique.
Keep up with the great content. I'm starting out on my own TH-cam journey, trying to offer my professional cooking experience in accessible or interesting ways, and admire the passion and depth of research which goes into your videos.
I like to pressure can vegetables every year. If the vegetables are not uniform in size and shape, the texture is more homogenous, and there is less presumption of safety. Being able to cut uniform sizes and shapes is useful for the home cook who cooks a lot, and therefore, the claw definitely has an application for those of us who aren't professionals. Part of knife skills, also, is how you hold the knife, which also helps you reduce stress injury, because you are using the shape of the knife to help you and not relying on your hand's speed and strength.
See this guys comments is how you put forth an opposing opinion/argument not based on facts from either side (facts of how many injuries are due to how someone cuts food stuffs at home). Perfect counter argument!
Though when I do cut stuff I will still do it "wrong" but careful, as I rarely cut stuff (Except with a knife and fork LMAO)
🖐🔪🩸 😱 😭 ✊ 🚑 🏥
Yeah! I’m quite new at cooking things (at least all by myself) and I always try to use the claw because, and this is very important, I SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED WITH SHARP OBJECTS! I haven’t hurt myself with a knife yet (my mom keeps her knives quite sharp), but I have stabbed myself in the hand with scissors before, so I’m not gonna make the margin of error any wider but putting my fingers in the perfect spot for then to be cut off. Also, being a casual pianist means that I need my fingers to be in good working order.
A couple of months ago I decided I wanted to learn proper knife technique and looked up videos and practiced and I have found it has actually helped my skills to use the claw technique. Admittedly, I don't tuck away my knuckles but rather rest my fingernails against my blade, not literally up to the blade, hard to explain for me. It serves three functions for me: 1) it serves as a guide for the thickness of the cut etc, 2) I can get a better grip on the things I'm cutting, 3) it's fun! Thanks for your feedback!
@@molly.dog8brooke792 I'd like to point out that keeping knives sharp is *paramount* to cutting safely. When they are sharp you use the sharpness of the blade to cut, requiring very little force. When you use a blunt knife you need to cut with the pressure of your hand, which will make it much harder to stop should anything go wrong (like when your hand slips cutting the rounder parts of an onion, which is also more likely because the blunt knife doesn't "bite" into the stuff you are cutting properly). Ideally your knife should be so sharp that taking a very ripe, soft tomato you can place the blade on top and *without pressure* just do a slicing motion, cutting into the tomato. Tomatoes in general make for a good sharpness "benchmark" for a home cook since it's probably the softest hard-to-cut thing you'll be cutting regularly.
When we learned to use the claw method we learned to always keep the fingertips behind the knuckle and then let the side of the blade touch the knuckle so we could control the cuts easier for consistency. And I always keep my thumb behind my fingers, after years of cooking I found that my thumb is most likely to get bit by the knife.
But you are right, when it comes to cooking dinner at home the technique doesn't matter if you go slow and steady.
What matters is that you have a good knife and that it is sharp, if the knife is not comfortable to hold or a little dull, requiring extra force to cut with, you are more likely to have an accident.
I noticed on cooking/travel shows looking at 3rd world cooking, they usually cut the vegetables over the pot with a paring knife. No need for a chopping board. As for me, I use a serrated blade for everything (I think it was originally a steak knife). No need to sharpen it; no need to worry about cutting myself, as it is not very sharp. It still cuts at about the same speed and quality as I could manage with non-serrated.
Adam: Throws a few shots at Marco every now and then.
Also Adam: Talks at the camera while waving a knife like Marco.
All the best chefs wave kitchen tools arould when they talk. I districtly remember my mom giving me a stern lecture, waving around a rolling pin while tenderizing chicken. She never layed a finger on me, but I saw what she did that chicken >.>
Those effortless segues to the sponsor messages deserve some kind of award.
Nearly every professional has a hand full of scars, and are often healing from a slip. Preparing for 4 is a massive scale smaller than meals for 400. Yes, we curl our fingers in, by by the end we have out fingers out(like Chef Marco), and in doing so, slow down for the last few cuts and with practice, it gets faster. And I will tell you, those last few cuts is what gets us every time, that or a dull knife or difficult to handle item, that does an unexpected slip...or your near frozen fingers/gloved hands not feeling properly where they are, or the clam/oyster knife poking through the cut(not puncture proof) glove...or the mandolin /cringe.(man there's lots of sharp unguarded things in a kitchen) Knife skills are learned not so much from school, but from these thousands and thousands of prepped meals. But Dude, you streamline some dishes, change classic dishes with little to no apology with good results, while with other dishes you take days to make, you are a Chef if you wanna call yourself that. You make a living cooking, and research more into some recipes than some chefs ever will. Are you the best? no, but you are not claiming such. Stay humble so you keep questioning yourself, but be brave, question the norm, keep giving us the well researched, journalist view of cooking. Thanks.
Yes, round things, but also cold things, slippery things, sharp things that limit how you can hold, difficult to open things, or things that have parts to remove with a knife, and anything people hold in their hands to cut. It is more about popularity than difficulty. Today it's the Avocado, yesterday it was the bagel, and tomorrow will be instant pot steam burns hehe or whatever.
Best comment
@@jamesdouthit3791 Thanks
@@jamesdouthit3791 Next best Comment.
Adams style is the one ive used in all the restaraunts ive worked in from maine to virginia and now florida. Ive had a few cooks and a chef want me to curl my fingers usually with the same scripted dialogue that Adam mentioned which makes me think hes heard it himself. While I have burned myself and accidentally stabbed myself once shucking an oyster as a newbie-back in the day, ive NEVER cut myself. proud to say it. im always careful and paced (not rushed) and always concentrate. So in short i agree with everything Adam said, having been a line cook. Also his research is spot on, a lot of knife cuts come from a dull knife rather that finger position.
I appreciate your thoroughness and honesty SO much. The internet is a scary place, but you make it wonderful. Safe driving is definitely the way to go.
him : be safe, you do you
also him : *eyes lacking emotion while gesturing with knife*
honestly theres one thing absolutely more important than technique. hell, more important than anything in the kitchen. and thats an incredibly well kept and extremely sharp knife.
I am sorry Adam, but I cant hold this: while your basic argument is valid, seeing how you cut against your own hand is uncomfortable. The "claw" has two parts - guiding your chef knife resting on your knuckles and angling the blade away from your hand. If the edge goes away from your hand, you cant cut yourself. It requires some attention and time when trying to relearn your cutting technique, but you can do it. And you dont have to make the claw, just guide the cutting edge away from your holding hand. Cut like this 👊\ not like this 👊/
someone give this man some attention.
I actually hadn't thought about this before when using either technique, but I'm sure it makes a huge difference. I'll try and be more cognizant of it from here on, thanks!
Petrified me seeing those exposed fingers. You only have to stop paying attention for a second to trip while walking!
James Eden I was thinking something like that watching him cut those potatoes.
Hmm. i've heard the "claw" many times from many sources from cooking shows. This is the first i've heard of angling the knife away from the hand... Them chefs are holding out safety tips from us normies for their exclusive clubs! xD
I can actually partially answer the question of "What kind of cutting injures people in the kitchen?", and It's cutting with a dull knife. A knife should be very sharp, because that is the function of the tool, the tool being a thing we use to make something more easy. A knife doesn't make cutting more easy if it isn't sharp, and what can happen is the knife will shift, instead of cutting into the food, and instead possibly into you, plus you can add the extra force you are having to exert in order to compensate for the lack of cutting that the knife is doing. This can not only cause an injury, but a very serious injury because of the extra force required, which is NOT needed when the knife is extremely sharp.
This concept is actually applied to ALL tools, and that is why if a tool is not maintained to keep it's efficiency it will become hazardous... because it's literally not doing its job anymore. A kitchen knife is no exception.
To a point, I believe this is correct. However, I've got some incidental cuts that I believe wouldn't have happened at all (probably been more like scrapes) with a knife that wasn't so crazy sharp.
Not every cutting task requires a super-sharp knife . Throughout the worst of COVID-19, I actually used a somewhat dull ceramic box cutter to open tape on packages because I wanted to avoid hospital visits, and I only used a real blade for packages that were too tough to open (usually made from heavy paper bags).
Not to mention you'll probably be faster with a sharp knife because it just makes things easier. I used to work at a restaurant, and I have a quality, sharp, knife. Whenever I visit my parents and use their shitty knives that has probably never seen a sharpener (whetstone or otherwise) I find it just takes so much more work to get anything done. I don't change my technique at all, but it will take significantly longer than using my own knife
1:05 "Every group of self-important people has something like this" SO TRUE
This may be my favorite Adam video
Every comment here: "damn Adam thiccc"
I'm a little jealous of people who have the time to cook at work out, with my crazy schedule I can only do one or the other. So like for the last year I've mostly been eating really basic foods like instant noodles with eggs and veggies added, quick scrambles/omelettes, microwaved meals like frozen precooked hamburger patties, and things that dont require cooking like yogurt, milk, and toast but I work out like crazy. If I'm lucky I get to cook 1 good meal a week so i try and make giant quantities. Adam seems to be superman though, I dont know how he can do his home projects like gardening, cook for the family and for the videos, take care of his kids, do editing and other TH-cam stuff, do his day job, and work out. If it were me I'd be raising the kids free range so they'd probably wind up semi-feral and my videos would have 2000's TH-cam level of quality.
He really is. Kinda looks weird
Adam really bringing out his inner MPW swinging around that knife as he talks
For me, trying to learn knife skills was a way of motivating me to cook more food at home. So it's been a good thing.
But hearing friends avoid home cooking cause they "can't even chop properly" is kinda sad
The first part is so true. I find it extremely satisfying to cut veggies fast. If anybody remembers the cutting game from wii party, thats how inl feel.
"She became angry and slammed knife against counter..."
Rip. Poor lady.
There's a hilarious vid of Wolfgang Puck behind the scenes of his service for the Oscars post ceremony dinner. One of the cooks was wearing a rubber glove over a band-aid as he was carving a ham. Wolfgang says to him with a big smile "oh the ham wasn't enough, you had to carve your finger too, eh?" xD
“Why I cut myself, NOT my food”
In 20 years experience I've never seen anybody cut themselves really badly, it's usually just the tip of a digit because they were fucking around and not paying attention.
The worst I did was I had a bad habit of wiping my knife on my apron (I changed my aprons alot during the day, clean apron for lunch/dinner/ any prep with raw meat or flour/fine herbs and spices)
We had just gotten fresh knives in, and they were BRAND NEW not the same knives that have been cycling for years. I wiped the blade off on my apron and kept working.
My socks all of a sudden felt wet.
I looked down and at the same time one of my co-workers just said "DUDE" really loudly.
I sliced right into my thigh, so quick and clean that I didn't even notice.
I was prepping on line too, so once I patched myself up I had to help tear down and flip and stock my whole section because people don't like to eat blood
You wouldnt cut ur thigh if u did the claw bruv
Damn, how deep was the cut would you say?
HOW MUCH fucking blood did you lose if the first way you noticed was that your SOCKS were wet, holy shit
Ahhh, you were a journalist. That explains so much.