The Professional Chef's Knife Kit

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

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

Rating:
Summary: the garde manger chef
Review: this book was very detailed.only thing i did not like is because it was paper back but other than that it had a lot of information about diffrent knifes.

Rating:
Summary: Puts the magic in your knives!!
Review: This comprehensive guide to knives by the Culinary Institute of America is a must have for anyone interested in refining their knife techniques in the kitchen. Information on types of knives, materials, construction, specific uses and handling is thoroughly detailed in this book. Information on different types of cutting techniques includes photographs as well as instructions. Just having a superior set of knives is nice, but learning how to use them efficiently and precisely makes all the difference to a completed dish. If you can't attend a class on knives and their proper use, then this book is the next best thing. Better yet, do both!!

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

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

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Manual on Knife Skills and Cutting Tools. Buy it.
Review: `The Professional Chef's Knife Kit' by `The Culinary Institute of America' contains absolutely everything you ever wanted to know about things in the kitchen with sharp edges and things that maintain those sharp edges.

The book actually goes far beyond the care and honing of knives, as it is also an advanced course on knife skills. The chapters are:

Knife Basics covering history and the range of kitchen tools for cutting.
Knife Care, or how to keep the knife sharp without shedding any blood.
Basic Cuts, possibly the most important and interesting chapter in the book.
Vegetables and Fruits, or how to wrangle onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and other veggies to the pot.
Meat and Poultry
Fish and Shellfish
Summary
Glossary

As a former Boy Scout who took his knife skills very seriously and knew all about Arkansas stones and the proper angle with which to hone a knife, I am really impressed by the level of detail in this book. The Basic Cuts chapter is a wonderful example of how valuable this book can be. Hundreds of hours on the Food Network will cover most of this stuff eventually, but this brings it all together and adds things Emeril never even mentions. Section of this chapter is `Preliminary Cuts', which is roughly comparable to removing the bark from a tree and squaring it off before cutting it into marketable lumber. `Shredding and Grating' shows you how to do the same operation with either a knife or a box grater. The sections on `Slicing Cuts' gives equal time to the chef's knife, the paring knife, and the mandoline, covering both the simple and the exquisite such as the crinkle cut done with a mandoline and the roll cut done on cylindrical veggies done with a knife. Of great value is the instruction on how to do the most basic of cuts such as the Julienne, the Batonnet, and the various dices. You probably have no real sense of the level of detail to which French cooking doctrine goes until you have read the section on decorative cuts of potatoes.

This book is an excellent supplement to Jacques Pepin's `Complete Techniques'. Pepin describes a dozen or so different cuts of a potato, the CIA tells you how to do them.

This book is hands down the best argument I can think of for relegating your food processor to making doughs and bread crumbs and laying out the cash for a really sharp knife and a few hours of practice.

This book is a must for serious amateur and professional cooks.