Chapter 3 : Cuts

THE CHRONICLER OF THE KITCHEN                                            Fall 2008

Mike Campbell

     ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY:    

CUTS – PART 1

A sharp knife produces a clean cut, a nice line with very little effort. This tenet is drilled into every cook. This is what you want, even if it is you that is being cut.

This would seem to make no sense until it is you that has been cut.

A sharp knife will do what it is supposed to do, where it is supposed to do it. It doesn’t slip or slide or posses a mind of its own. A properly honed and properly held knife will do its work effortlessly.

A dull knife, on the other hand, does not easily follow orders and requires too much “elbow grease”. It will usually not do what you want, go where you want, and takes extra time to complete its task.

At the moment I have all my fingers and want to keep it that way. I have learned the hard way, not to mess with something that is frozen. This is how I received my worst cut and do not want to re-live the experience. I was trying out a new serrated knife that was advertised to cut through anything. Of course this was not true, instead of cutting the frozen meat, the knife slide across the top until it found my finger.

Human flesh is much softer than frozen animal muscle and part of my fingernail and the top of my finger were gone in an instant. The pain hit me even faster. The knife did not cut down into my finger but across. This type of cut damages much more skin, causes more pain, and takes forever to heal. You do not want this of cut.

A “crosscut” exposes many blood vessels, all of which want to bleed, cause pain, and not heal. A downward cut on the other hand, tends to heal rather quickly. You press the two pieces back together and bind them. Apply soap, water, a band-aid and you are back to work in a few minutes.

You become adept at knowing whether the cut is severe enough to require stitches. If you get the stitches is another story. A few summers ago, I unfortunately stuck my finger in a hedge trimmer. After the required amount of cursing, I applied pressure, elevated my hand and waited for the bleeding to stop. The entire time my sister was telling me to go to the hospital and get stitches. After cleaning the cut, I could tell that a band-aid and a few days to heal was all I needed.

Mechanical slicers are extremely dangerous. This is a carpenter’s circular saw, only cleaner. These can take your fingertip off in the blink of an eye. Common sense tells you to keep such a tool unplugged unless it is in use, but this is not the case in most kitchens. Most places provide a “gauntlet” to protect you from the blade while cleaning the slicer; unfortunately most of these safety devices are collecting dust in the drawer under the slicer.

BEWARE THE PLASTIC WRAP!  A chef in culinary school once told us that the most dangerous piece of equipment in the kitchen was the plastic wrap. What? It’s not the plastic but the cutter. We all know that knives are sharp and usually pay attention to these and other obvious kitchen dangers, but who thinks about plastic wrap?

I learned the hard way that Chef Bellinni knew what he was talking about. I was wrapping a hotel pan and as was my habit, I stretched the plastic from one end to the other and then quickly ran my hand along the box to cut the plastic.

This method works fine unless the cutter is not quite perpendicular or you put your hand just a little to far inside the box. The cutter is a strip of metal that sits atop a piece of cardboard inside the box. This metal strip consists of sharp inverted ”V”’s. If you run the side of you hand along this cutter, you receive multiple punctures and tearing of the flesh. Your hand looks funny because the punctures are evenly spaced. After I did this, and was fighting off the pain, I thought to myself, “so that’s what he meant”. I wish I could say I only did this once, but alas that is not the case.

LEMON JUICE. Be careful when handling fresh lemons, their juice will find every cut you did not know you had. And the sting from the acid will not dissipate quickly.

If you work in a kitchen long enough, you will cut yourself. Don’t be foolish enough to think you won’t. Be careful, be prepared, stop the bleeding as quickly as possible and report the injury to your supervisor.

And as surprising as it may sound, the business will carry on if you are not there!

I owe, I owe, its off to work I go.

Into THE CAULDRON!

Is tuisce deoch na sceal