Day 1: Knife Skills and Sanitation

Day 1 of culinary school!!! Learned the proper way to chop an onion (you've been doing it wrong your entire life) and how to dice carrots into perfect 1/16" cubes (much harder than it seems)!

Tips:

• Sprinkle salt over garlic before chopping to absorb the sticky oil that otherwise causes the garlic to stick to the blade;
• Breathe through your mouth while chopping onion;
• The middle shoots in garlic adds bitterness, so remove when using garlic raw;
• Refrigerating onion, garlic, potato and herbs changes their molecular structure to make them bitter - store at room temp in an earth environment, like a clay pot or stone mortar; chefs use kosher salt (which is not iodized) and never iodized table salt, because iodine adversely affects flavor.