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Kitchen

Cutting techniques​

Being skilled with knife work will make your life in the kitchen so much easier. Learn the basics of cutting and get a good knife. A good chefs knife is the most important tool in the kitchen.

  1. Julienne: This technique involves cutting food into long, thin strips, resembling matchsticks. Commonly used for vegetables like carrots, celery, or bell peppers, it's great for stir-fries or garnishes.

  2. Brunoise: An extension of the julienne cut, brunoise involves first julienning the food and then dicing it into small cubes (about 1/8 inch). It's often used for aromatic vegetables like onions, carrots, and celery.

  3. Chiffonade: This technique is usually used for herbs or leafy vegetables. The leaves are stacked, rolled, and then sliced into thin ribbons. It's excellent for garnishes or adding herbs to dishes.

  4. Rangiri: A Japanese cutting technique used particularly for vegetables, where the food is rolled a quarter between cuts to create irregular, angled pieces. This is often used in simmered dishes to help the pieces absorb flavors better.

  5. Mince: Mincing is chopping food into very small pieces, smaller than a dice. This is often used for garlic, ginger, or herbs, where you want the flavor to be distributed throughout the dish.

  6. Batonnet: Similar to julienne but slightly thicker and larger, batonnet cuts are like small sticks. This is often the starting point for dicing into cubes.

  7. Paysanne: This involves cutting vegetables into thin, flat pieces. The shapes can vary (round, square, triangular), but they are all uniformly thin. This is often used for layered dishes or stews.

Dishes​

Clean as much as you can during food prep and make it a routine to have the kitchen as clean as possible when you have finished cooking. A little goal of mine is that the only thing that should require cleaning is the things going on the table. Having a quick way of washing single items is good. Try and make a routine where you can quickly wash a couple of utensils or knives between tasks when cooking.

Washing Machine​

I think having a dishwashing machine is critical, not only do you not have to care about doing the dishes, it also functions as a storage room for dirty dishes. Some things I have learned about using the dishwashing properly.

  • Having a dishwasher ready for dirty dishes is important.
  • Clean your filters regularly.
  • You don't have to use that much detergent, and also the cheapest option is more than okay.
  • Have some detergent in the prewashing cycle, to help clean.
  • If you have any problems, check if anything is blocking the rotating spinning water hoses.
  • You don't have to rinse the dishes before washing, that's the job of the dishwasher, just don't have any food scraps in the dishwasher.

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Thoughts

  • A dishwasher is as much a place to store dirty things as a washing machine.