Pinch Grip and Claw Grip

Or How to Keep Blood Out of your Vegetables

Hello, my name is Helen Rennie,

I'm the founder of Helen's Kitchen Cooking School

and today we're going to talk about

cutting vegetables without cutting your fingers.

To do that safely, you'll need to master

a pinch grip on your knife hand

and a claw grip on your guiding hand.

To hold my chef's knife, I'm pinching the blade

with my thumb and index finger,

and wrapping my third, fourth, and fifth fingers

around the handle.

This handhold gives me a lot more stability

than holding the knife just by the handle

or placing an index finger on top,

the way you'd eat a steak.

You never want the knife to jump around the board.

You want it to rock.

Lift the back of the knife,

and glide it forward on your board.

If you just touch the knife to the board, like this,

your pieces might not separate completely,

and the herbs will get bruised.

Now let's talk about your guiding hand.

Its purpose is to hold the vegetable in place,

and to position the blade of the knife

to give you precision.

It will need to get very close and personal with the knife!

To do that safely, you'll need to use a claw grip.

Imagine you're holding a small ball,

so that your palm and all your fingers

are in complete contact with it.

See how my hand is nice and round?

Now, any time one of my fingertips

decides to leave the ball, SNICK! bad things happen.

So do not let your fingers do that.

By the way, lemons and limes

make perfect balls for proper practice,

depending on the size of your hand.

Now stick the elbow out,

so that the guiding hand meets your knife head on.

With the knuckles on your second and third fingers,

that's the first knuckles after the nails,

glued to your knife in the widest part, like this.

The reason you want to be here

is because you'll need to lift your knife very little,

versus here, where you'll need to lift your knife a lot.

Not only is it slower, but more dangerous

because you might nick your knuckles.

You don't have that much blade, to place them here.

Now let's talk about what moves,

the knife or the vegetable.

It is always the knife.

The knife pushes against the knuckles of your guiding hand,

and the guiding hand gradually crawls back

on the vegetable.

And the knife follows it

by zig-zagging on the cutting board.

Of course, if you are slicing a celery stick,

you can just move the celery stick forward

instead of moving the knife back.

But try that with a diced celery stick

and it does not work too well,

because all those french-fry pieces of celery

move at a different pace.

People often complain that when they use this handhold,

they cannot see what they are doing,

because their hands are so close together.

Well, you don't need to see what you're doing,

you need to feel what you're doing.

If you rely on your eyes to tell you

where to place the knife,

you will never be able to get really small pieces

or gain any speed.

By the time the signal travels

from your eyes to your brain to your hands

to tell them to move,

you've already cut yourself.

Here's some common mistakes that I see

with claw grip in my classes.

Problem 1: Collapsed claw grip

where your fingertips are lying on the board or vegetable.

Holding the vegetable with your knuckles

is very ineffective.

You should hold it with your fingertips.

Problem 2: Flat claw grip

Very tense; you won't last long in this position.

Round up.

Problem 3: Raised wrist

Gets tiring very quickly!

Lower that wrist and relax your shoulder.

Problem 4: Elbow against the body

I realise that this position is not very comfy at first,

but a chopped-off thumb is not very comfy either.

Problem 5: Fear of the blade

Great fear of touching the knife blade

with your guiding hand.

That's like being afraid of touching a ruler with a pencil

while trying to draw a straight line.

It doesn't work too well, does it?

The only way you'll have an effective guide

is if you're smack against it.

If you want, practise with a pastry-scraper tool

on an empty board.

It's dull; there is no way to cut yourself.

Last but not least, is go slow.

Nobody is born with a perfect claw grip.

It takes lots of practice and feels awkward at first.

But when you've been doing it with perfect technique

for about a week, you can pick up speed.

From Helen's Kitchen in Boston,

happy cooking and baking to you.

Produced by Helen Rennie. Music by Django Reinhardt.

Copyright (C) 2011 by Helen Rennie. All Rights Reserved.

More techniques at beyondsalmon.com