Mastering Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Tools in Your Kitchen [With DVD]

I have been a serious home cook for 30 years, and have developed some pretty reasonable self-taught knife skills, just from the years of cooking. I don't know that this book would have much to offer a professional cook, but it is pure gold for the self taught. I bought it a week ago, and embarked on a series of lessons from the book, and my understanding of good knife skills has increased ten fold. My knives feel much more natural in my hands now, and I have learned to work with my knives, instead of forcing them to do what I want. The results are great -- not really different than what I achieved before, but more ordered and elegant, and while not faster yet, I can tell that they will be as soon as I get my groove. This book is easy to follow, well illustrated, and nicely ordered for a home mini-course on better knife skills.

This book is very informative with awesome close-up pictures of knife working. The DVD that it comes with is also very good as well. A must have to learn or sharpen your knife skills...

Great for beginners. The illustrations are first rate, and the DVD (comes with the book) is wonderful as well. The book is easy to follow and explains what kinds of knives are useful for what purposes, has advice on what to buy, and how to maintain your knives. And, of course, how to perform various food prep tasks (cut, chop, fillet, etc) with your knives! I quickly learned easier and more efficient ways to get things done in the kitchen from this book and DVD -- stuff they teach professional chefs in culinary schools. The only minor caveat is that the author is a bit overly opinionated on things like his preference for wooden cutting boards and knife blocks vs magnetic bars (small details). Highly recommended overall.

This is a well balanced book, with beautiful photography and explanations for the cook who wants to truly begin to understand proper techniques of knife skills. I have taken classes with the author and he is a wonderful teacher and his explanations made me comfortable with even the heaviest of chefs knives (of which I was previously always fearful of losing a finger to) and the book is a great expansion and expansion of this. (If you are in or around NYC, check out ICE for one of his classes - but do it early, as they sell out months in advance.) As to the criticism that it is "one-sided" or "out of date" this is not the case - he purposely only focuses on "Western" or continental techniques in this book. (This is also true in his classes - he does a separate series on Chinese and Japanese cooking and techniques) For most Americans, these techniques are all you really need. More "Eastern" techniques are mostly elaborations on this with more specialized knives - but honestly, if you can do it with a 10 inch chef's knife, who cares about getting the "newest" style of knife? 3 or 4 high quality knives will serve you just as well as a host of specialized knives and you don't have to replace them or learn new techniques every time something new and exciting comes on the market. This book will give you a quality basis for teaching yourself excellent knife skills.

"Mastering Knife Skills" by chef Norman Weinstein is a marvel of a book - visually attractive, overflowing with facts both historical and culinary, the ultimate guide to the choosing of knives, their care and upkeep, and their optimal use. This book fills a real gap in the field of cook-bookery. I, a serious amateur cook, have been cooking for over forty years now, and yet, in forty years of watching television cooking shows and reading cookbooks (of which I own some thirty), I have never before seen any teacher or TV chef relate - really relate in any serious and systematic, way - to this most important of all our cooking tools, at least not until the present illuminating book. One could be forgiven for expecting such a book to offer mere dry factual knowledge on the subject, but in fact it is excitingly written and lavishly illustrated, and Weinstein's style has a flow and a sweep that pull the reader along from page to page, like a good detective novel, from slicing through dicing, to mincing to filleting to fabricating - yes, fabricating - a chicken. The accompanying DVD, furthermore, is graphic and extremely well presented. I have seen Norman Weinstein in the classroom. He is an inspiring teacher, who wears his prodigious erudition lightly, and enlivens his classes with a quick and warm sense of humor. That same encyclopedic knowledge, sympathy and warmth come across in his book as well. And one last note: following Weinstein's instructions I sat down for an hour with a sharpening stone and sharpened all my knives to an edge the like of which I have not ever gotten from the "professionals". While this may not be the only cookbook you will ever want, it certainly is the only knife book you will ever need. Harvey B.