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Even if you don't have time to take a class on knife skills, you can still benefit from the knowledge taught. In fact, we have a few of our favorite tips right here, and we guarantee they'll dramatically improve the way you use your knife.

1. The fewer cuts you make in your onion, the less it will make you tear. So cut efficiently, succinctly and as quickly as possible.

2. If you hold a piece of damp paper towel in between your lips while you cut, it soaks up all the tear-inducing fumes. I don’t understand this witchcraft, and I don’t question it. I just know it worked for me and it’ll probably work for you, too.

You don’t have to be afraid of wasting some food.

All right, all right, sustainability folks, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let me explain.

It is infinitely easier to cut a round food (think potatoes, onions, carrots, oranges) when you are working with a flat surface. For some of these, it might mean sacrificing some corners that you will inevitably not be able to use in this recipe.

As a college kid, I would have balked at the idea of not using every single piece of my potato — the potato I bought with my scarce funds. I would have toiled for much, much longer, chopping up a potato in its entirety instead of shaving off some of the sides to make it flat and stable.

Chefs don’t do that.

Go ahead and chop off the sides of those round foods to make them flat. It makes them so much easier to turn into matchsticks and, in turn, to dice.

“But what about the waste?” you say. Turn it into stock. Or compost it and fertilize your garden later. There are a million things you can do with leftover veggie waste, y’all. Just be creative. Turn it into a juice, for goodness’ sake.

At the end of my class, I went home with a giant bag of veggie scraps to turn into stock. I just stuck it in my freezer until a day when I have time to do it. Simple.

You can drag the tip of your chef’s knife across a celery stick to slice it thinly.

You can do the same thing with a bell pepper. Those thin, fibrous veggies can be sliced gracefully and thinly by simply pressing and holding down the tip of your knife and sliding it through the veggie.

You can de-rib a bell pepper with ease.

Look at how good that bell pepper looks! Not a seed in sight. But how? Simple, y’all.

Cut off the top and bottom of that pepper. Find one of the ribs, the pithy white part with the seeds, and make a slice in the side. Then simply run your knife along the edge of the pepper, essentially deboning it. Just pop those little pithy parts off from the larger, greener body, and you’re good to go.

DON’T use the blade of your knife to scrape bits of food off your cutting board.

You may see people doing this, but my instructor urged us not to. When you scoop a pile of onion into a bowl using the blade of your knife and your hand, the scraping motion will inevitably dull the knife.

Instead, use the back of your knife or a kitchen scraper. Your knives will thank you.

As for that that weird tool that came in your knife kit …

That’s your sharpening tool, and you really do need to be using it (sorry). Every time you make a cut, little microscopic fibers of your knife splinter off, dulling it. Getting a sharp knife is as easy as running its blade (at a 20-degree angle) across the sharpening tool. Do that 10 times on each side. Just do it.

What do you think of these tips? Do you have any tips and tricks for the best way to use a knife? If so, we want to hear from you! Share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Article Source: Food Network