This week we share the third in a series of blog posts that give you practical weight loss tools. We are demonstrating knife skills to help you prepare food for the week to make your weight loss journey easier. Karis Hicks created a food demonstration for our Sweet Loss Wellness, Inc. clients as part of her Nutrition Internship with Sweet Life Wellness, Inc. and final project for her master’s degree in nutrition from North Carolina Central University. Karis offers her insights in the accompanying video to help you make the most of your time and energy as you lose weight and keep it off. Here’s what Karis shares with you in her own words with this video.
Karis: My name is Karis. I am Kay’s resident graduate student intern. I’m getting my Master’s degree in Nutrition Studies. So we are going to be talking about knife skills and knife sharpening. We are going to be looking at how to properly sharpen and true a knife as well as some different knife skills. And then I’m going to demonstrate with a lovely sweet potato, which I’m actually going to pop right into my steamer for my dinner tonight. And then also an apple, which is going be really difficult for me to eat with braces, but I’ll probably steam it later and make something soft.
I chose a sweet potato because this is one of my daily staples of a nutritious food. And I chose an apple because it is so easy to transport with you anywhere you go as just a healthy snack. You can pack it with peanut butter and chia seeds, you can even have it with hummus. Some people like apples with hummus, which I find really interesting, just like carrots with peanut butter. But I want to show you these basic knife skills. So the big idea with our knife skills is that a sharp knife is safer than a dull knife. And the reason why we’re even talking about knife skills today is because of what you see in front of you. The sweet potato and this apple. Most of our whole foods, unless it’s like a whole grain bread or whole grain brown rice, most of our whole foods come in vegetable and fruit form.
And part of our healthy lifestyle choices is eating more whole foods. And sometimes it can be frustrating or intimidating or you just don’t want to do it because it can feel like a lot of work to cut this up and steam it or roast it or bake it in a healthy way. But with a good sharp knife, you will have such an ease for preparing these whole foods and it will allow you to adapt these into your diet more frequently and you will enjoy eating them more frequently because it’s not as hard to prepare. So this is our truing rod. If you can see that, you can get these from Amazon fairly cheaply. I did not get this from Amazon, this actually came from Aldi, but it is a good nine inch chef’s knife. It’s got some good weight to it. And I can keep it pretty sharp.
I have my general little sharpener here, which you can also find just a small one from Amazon. It’s very easy to keep up with and it doesn’t take much maintenance at all. So what you want to start with is sharpening your knife and then you true it. So when you true a knife, you are making sure that you are keeping the edge straight and that there could occasionally be some little nicks or dents in your blade that you want to make sure you true out or get rid of so that your knife stays in good condition. So first we’re going to sharpen our knife. Mine has a double sharpener with a coarse sharpener and then a fine. So I always do coarse first and then fine. Just to make sure that we are keeping it really sharp.
I actually just sharpened this on Sunday, so I’m not going to do it as often as I would, but I would usually do about 30 where you’re letting the knife, the weight of the knife pull through and you’re starting at the very back, pulling all the way through to the tip. And then you switch to the fine and do the same thing over and over and over. Also, again about 20 to 30. And then after that, I would recommend wiping your knife off or rinsing it off to make sure that you’re not honing it with any knife dust. And then you’re going to hold your truer in one hand and you’re going to go at an angle on each side of the blade. Same thing about 20 to 30 times so that when you look down the edge of your knife, you shouldn’t see any nicks. You shouldn’t see any bent parts. It should look really even on both sides. Okay? So again, we sharpen our knives to allow us to be able to incorporate whole foods more frequently. And we also sharpen them because a sharp knife is safer than a dull knife.
But because it was sharp, it just made a really straight clean cut. So it is much safer. So make sure that you take care of your knives. So part of your knife skills. So I teach this to my 10 through 12th grade high schoolers. When you’re holding a knife, you do not want to hold back here. You do not want to hold like this. None of those give you a really good grip. You want to use your thumb and your finger. Your thumb goes on one side, your pointer finger goes on the other. And these three just kind of act like an octopus, which is hilarious to teach kiddos. And your thumb should be on this side. Your finger should be on this side. That way you have a nice firm grip and you’re going to rock and cross the knife back and forth.
So I’m going to demonstrate this on our lovely sweet potato, which I’m going to eat for dinner tonight. And then another thing you want to remember is your guide hand. So your guide hand is what holds your vegetable. You don’t want your fingers flat out like this because you will lose a finger. It will happen at some point. You want to make sure you’re tucking your fingers in like a claw, making sure that you have a firm grip on the fruit or vegetable or item that you’re cutting. But make sure that your fingers are tucked in so that you don’t cut anything off because that would not be fun for you or your knife or your potato. So I’m going to keep my claw (fingers) in. I’m going to just cut down and cut off the end. And then I’m going to cut these into smaller pieces. And then we’re going to take these pieces and just keep cubing them. They do not have to be perfect cubes. This is not a culinary arts school. I’m going to put them right in my steamer. If you would like your food to steam faster, you can make them smaller cubes. If you don’t care how fast it steams, you can just go through and make them chunkier cubes. So this is what your dice should look like. It’s called a rough dice because it’s not precise.
And voila, my sweet potato is diced. It took me about 15 seconds. It’s in the steamer, it’s ready to go. I just have to pop the lid on, give it about 10 to 15 minutes to steam up and it is good to go. And that is how you would dice through your sweet potato. So I’m going to rinse my knife really quickly so that my apple does not taste like sweet potato because that would not be pleasant. And I’m sure you have all cut apples before. So this is not anything and sweet potatoes probably. This is not anything new to you. But just to show you the simplicity again, we’ve got our fingers tucked in. We are just going to cut down each side. I’m a big apple slice girl, so we are just going to make nice slices. If you were to coat these in a little bit of lemon juice and stick them in a jar to pack with you for your lunch, they would not turn brown as quickly.
You can also pack these as a snack, or you can bake or cook with these apples and use them in oatmeal. I’ve used them with meat before. I’ve done some chicken and apple recipes, so you can definitely incorporate fruit into your meals as well. And this is a lovely chopped up apple, which again, I’m sure you’ve all done before. But it is a great way to make sure that you have some fresh fruits and some fresh vegetables because again, it can be really time consuming if you have a dull knife. It can be intimidating if you don’t know how to properly hold your knife and properly cross through that. But the more comfortable you are with your knife, the more you can incorporate those healthy whole foods into your diet. I love doing this with Brussels sprouts, with broccoli. I’ve done this with mangoes before. Any kind of fruit and vegetable that involves cutting. I just go to town with my knife skills on that. So any questions that you all have for me, I’m just going to rinse my knife really quickly.
I think that’s the last thing I would add, is just really take good care of your knife. Make sure you clean it as soon as you use it. And never leave these in the sink. Not only is it dangerous for you or someone else but it also damages the knife, if this part of the knife touches the metal or the ceramic of your sink and you want to make sure you’re taking really good care of them. So if there aren’t any other questions, Kay, that, that is back over to you.
Click here to discover how to make conscious choices and eat mindfully.
-
- Click here to watch the Latest Sweet Life Wellness Podcast Episode on How to Enjoy Mindful Eating.
-
- Click here to listen for FREE on Apple Podcasts.
-
- Want to listen for FREE on Spotify? Click here.
Kay Loughrey, MPH, RDN, LDN
Transformational Speaker, Breakthrough Coach, Nutritionist-Dietitian
Karis N. Hicks
North Carolina Central University
M.S. – Nutrition Studies
Thank you for reading this blog post. Join the Sweet Life Newsletter to stay up to date on blog posts, events, and other ways to live your best sweet life.