How to Use a Paring Knife
Love to cook? Then you must be acquainted with a paring knife. Its blade size is usually between 3 to 5 inches. In spite of being small, its versatility serves most of your cooking preparations. The super sharp tip of the blade can do a variety of intricate work. You can never imagine making a salad without it. These applications give rise to the question, How to Use a Paring Knife.
It’s an irony that many people don’t have the proper idea of utilizing it. In fact, they’re regularly mistaken for which purpose a paring knife can be used and for which it can’t. For instance, you can’t chop a meat steak by using a paring knife. Once more, its use isn’t restricted only to cutlery tasks. As I said before, you can do a versatile job if you know How to Use a Paring Knife properly.
Usage
- Slicing
- Trimming
- Peeling thick/thin skin
- Coring
- Deveining shrimp
- Losing cakes from pan
- Preparing spareribs
- Seeding
Techniques: How to Use a Paring Knife
Slicing:
Step 1: Place the fruit or vegetable horizontally on a cutting board.
Step 2: Now lay your knife at one end of the fruit. Push it down straightly so that your knife touches the board on the other side passing through the flesh.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 till your knife reaches the other end of the vegetable or food, whatever it is.
Peeling:
Step 1: Place your thumb on the bottom and the forefinger on the top edge of the food.
Step 2: With the knife in your dominant hand, place the sharp edge on the food skin. Put your index finger on the blunt side and your thumb on the food a little away from the knife.
Step 3: Now slip your knife beneath the skin toward that thumb finger.
Step 4: Finally, rotate the food and guide your knife with your thumb to remove the skin completely.
Coring:
Step 1: Place your thumb near the tip of your knife and the index on the other side.
Step 2: Now insert the tip into the top of the food like tomato or strawberry. Then run the blade around the core at a slight angle.
Step 3: When you complete cutting the top in a conical shape, then simply pop out the stem.
Deveining the shrimp:
Step 1: Make a shallow slit over the outside curve it so that the vein is exposed.
Step 2: Now using the tip of the knife, haul out the dark vein.
Unmolding cakes from the pan:
Step 1: Cool the cake for 5 minutes.
Step 2: Then run your knife between the cake and pan around the round-shaped pan.
Step 3: Cool it again for some moment. I recommend you refrigerate it.
Step 4: Finally, when it is firmly set, draw your knife around the cake again. Then unmold it. Hopefully, it’ll come out.
Removing the fat layer for preparing spare ribs:
Step 1: First, lose the papery membrane from one end of the piece with the assistance of the tip.
Step 2: Then pull the membrane by grabbing it with a paper towel. It’ll come off.
Seeding:
Use the tip of your knife in the same way as I stated previously.
Precautions
- Keep it away from the children.
- Keep it inside a holder so that when you open the kitchen drawer, you don’t get hurt.
- Don’t use it for chopping purposes.
Knife Skills: How to Use a Paring Knife (Video)
Final verdict
After knowing How to Use a Paring Knife, now it all appears to be simple. Isn’t that so? You just need to know some strategies and practice a lot to handle them appropriately. For this reason, I suggest you apply it to soft and smaller foods first. Thus, it’ll get easier when you use it on tougher foods. Also, you’ll acquire control while using it. I think, the question, How to Use a Paring Knife, no more dismaying you.