Tips for Cutting and Chopping

If your meat carving board does not have a reservoir to collect juices as they run off the meat, place the board in a lipped cookie sheet or a sheet pan and carve the meat on the board as usual. Transfer the meat to a serving platter, remove the board, and pour the collected juices from the pan on to the platter. --Cook's Illustrated

With the thigh skin-side down, make a lengthwise incision down to the bone. Then work the knife blade around the bone to free it from the meat. Crack the thigh bone in half with the back of a large chef's knife or cleaver. Pull out each half of the bone. --Cook's Illustrated

There are two ways to carve a rib roast-either with the rib attached for prime rib or without the rib for slices of any thickness. 1. For thick prime rib slices, stand roast on end with ribs facing up and slice between each rib. 2A. For slices without bone, detach the roast from the bones by cutting along the inside of the ribs. 2B Turn the roast onto a counter and slice into pieces of desired thickness. --Cook's Illustrated

To chop a small quantity of herbs, put the herbs in a small glass, and snip them with scissors until minced. --Cook's Illustrated

When you are making a recipe that calls for both garlic and herbs, you can combine the tasks and make both of them easier. When chopping garlic by itself, the garlic often sticks to the knife, riding up on the sides of the blade. If you chop the garlic and herbs together, the garlic sticks to the herbs, rather than to the knife. --Cook's Illustrated

When chopping nuts for the scores of test batches of nut crescent cookies, test cook Dawn Yanagihara-Mitchell found that using two chef's knives, held parallel, made the task go much faster. --Cook's Illustrated

When apple quarters are cored starting at the stem end, the quarters tend to break. However, this problem does not occur if you core the quarters starting at the blossom end. --Cook's Illustrated

The best kitchen utensils are not always the most modern. Some Hawaiian cooks use a large smooth stone rather than a chef's knife blade to smash garlic or crush spices. It works so well that our test kitchen director now keeps a "garlic rock" on her kitchen counter. --Cook's Illustrated

Dried chiles are often leathery and can be difficult to cut with a knife. A pair of scissors does the job with ease. To begin, snip off and discard the stem. Beginning at the stem end, cut chile lengthwise in half. Use your fingers to brush out seeds from inside chile halves. Cut seeded halves into thin stripes that can be toasted, stir-fried, or added to sauces and salsas. --Cook's Illustrated

When you need to cut bacon, especially just one or two pieces, kitchen scissors perform the task more easily than a knife. --Cook's Illustrated

When buying mangoes, look for fruit that gives slightly when pressed but is not mushy. Firm mangoes will ripen at room temperature. Also, smell the stem when purchasing mangoes; the aroma should be faintly sweet and floral. 1. Cut through the mango on either side of the flat pit in the center, slicing the mango into three pieces. 2. Use a sharp knife to remove the peel from the section that contains the pit. 3. Slide the knife around both sides of the pit to remove the attached fruit. 4. Make diagonal cross-hatches on each of the two remaining mango pieces, slicing down to (but not through) the peel. 5. Place your hand under each of the mango sections and push upward to invert the fruit; the cubes will rise and separate. 6. Slide the knife along the base of the cubes to separate them from the peel. --Cook's Illustrated

Dried fruit very often sticks to the knife when you try to chop it up for use in muffins, breads, and so on. To prevent that problem: Spray a thin film of vegetable spray onto the blade of your knife just before you begin chopping the dried fruit. The chopped fruit doesn't cling to the knife blade, and the knife stays relatively clean. --Cook's Illustrated

A large, well-sharpened chef's knife is the best tool for this task. (We recommend the Chef's Choice electric knife sharpener.) Cut off the ends of the onion and then peel it. Be careful not to remove too much of the onion, although you should remove dried-up center layers. Cut onion in half, pole to pole (from one end to the other). Make several horizontal cuts from one end of the onion almost to the other, but don't cut all the way through the root end. The exact number of cuts will depend of the size of the onion and the desired size of the dice. Now make several vertical cuts, pole to pole. Cut all the way through the onion. Finally, chop across the lengthwise cuts from the last step. Use your knuckles as a guide for the knife while holding the onions with your fingertips. Always pull your fingertips in towards your palm, extending the knuckles outward when doing this sort of dicing. It provides more control and eliminates the possibility of an accident. --Cook's Illustrated

Separate shallot into individual bulbs. 2. Peel skin from each bulb and lay flat side down on a work surface. Slice bulb crosswise almost to (but not through) the root end. 3. Make a number of parallel cuts through the top of the shallot down to the work surface. 4. Finally, make thin slices perpendicular to the lengthwise cuts made in step 3. --Cook's Illustrated

After cutting the avocado in half and removing the pit, slice through the meat, but not the skin, with a paring knife. Run a rubber spatula around the circumference, just inside the skin, to loosen the meat, then twist the spatula to pop out the meat. --Cook's Illustrated

When making recipes such as Bok Choy and Chinese Egg Noodles with Spicy Beef, associate editor Adam Ried partially freezes the meat to make it easy to slice very thinly. For the thin steaks used in this particular recipe, two hours in the freezer usually does the trick. --Cook's Illustrated

Some recipes call for halved rather than chopped cranberries. To make this task easy, place the cranberries in the gutter of a cutting board, then use a large knife to halve them all at once. --Cook's Illustrated

Peel and roughly chop as many garlic cloves as you'll need. Sprinkle the chopped garlic with a generous pinch of salt (table salt works fine, but the larger crystals of kosher salt work better). Gently lay the flat side of your chef's knife, not quite halfway up the blade, on the salted garlic and push it away from you while applying light pressure. Repeat this process seven or eight times (or more) until the garlic is smooth and partially liquefied. --Cook's Illustrated

Bench knives are used primarily by bakers to divide masses of unbaked dough or to scrape flour and dried dough off their work surfaces. This tool, which is wider than most spatulas, is also very useful for cutting and neatly serving bar cookies and lasagna. Press down firmly to cut a section, moving down the same line from one end of the pan to the other. When all the pieces are cut and the first one removed, slide the wide blade under the next piece and lift it neatly up and out. --Cook's Illustrated

The hard shell of a chestnut protects the tender meat. This technique removes in one piece both the shell and the thin membrane that covers the meat. 1. Score the shell of each chestnut around its equator. Do not cut into the meat. 2. Heat chestnuts in a 400-degree oven until the shells split, about 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the nuts from the oven. As soon as they can be handled, lift off shell and membrane (they should come off together) from each half. --Cook's Illustrated

This technique can be used with any olives in brine. Oil-cured olives, on the other hand, can be seeded by simply squeezing the olive to pop out the pit. Place the olive on the work surface and hold the flat edge of a large chef's knife over the olive. Hit the blade with your fist to smash the olive. Separate the pit from olive meat with your fingers. --Cook's Illustrated

Wet-cured hams--such as those sold in supermarkets--are usually only a portion of the leg, and are easy to slice. Generally speaking, slices should be about 1/4-inch thick. Again, use a sharp, thin bladed, flexible carving knife. Holding the knife perpendicular to the bone, carve full slices until you reach the bone. Then cut half-slices. Cut parallel to the leg bone to release the slices. Turn the ham over and carve half-slices in the same fashion. --Cook's Illustrated

Most country hams are sold whole and require a special carving technique. You can follow any recipe for country ham, but since they remain very salty even after cooking, try to keep the slices as thin as possible. Use a thin-bladed, flexible carving knife, and cut down perpendicular to the bone. Remove a wedge-shaped piece at a 45-degree angle. Carve thin slices right down to the bone. Twist the knife slightly when it hits the bone to release each slice. Decrease the carving angle in order to obtain slices of uniform thickness. Turn the ham over and carve lengthwise now, thinly slicing the remaining meat. --Cook's Illustrated

Small, hard seeds like fennel do not grind well, and they are seemingly impossible to chop because they scatter all over the counter when you bear down on them. To overcome this problem, follow this tip from cooking teacher, cookbook author, and regular Cook's Illustrated contributor Stephen Schmidt. Pour just enough water or oil on a small pile of the seeds to moisten them. Seeds can then be chopped with a chef's knife without flying all over the kitchen. --Cook's Illustrated

Use a paring knife to cut off the stem of each artichoke, then cut off the top third of each leaf with scissors. After the artichokes are cooked and have cooled to room temperature, take hold of the leaves in the center of each artichoke and pull them out as a single clump. Remove the choke (the hairy material at the base of the artichoke) with a spoon. This will leave a clean, hollow core which can be easily stuffed. --Cook's Illustrated

Raw fennel has an anise-like flavor that is excellent in salads or crudites. When sautéed or braised, fennel loses some of its pungency, but the slices soften nicely. Chop off the feathery fronds and tough stems. Save some fronds for salads or garnishes and use stems in stocks in place of celery. Cut fennel blub in half through the bottom and stem ends. Trim and discard bottom ends. Place fennel cut side down on a cutting board and slice into thin half-circles. --Cook's Illustrated