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When I’m setting up for knife work in either my professional or home kitchen, I automatically place a damp towel beneath the cutting board before I begin work. I can’t imagine using a cutting board without it. Chasing your cutting board across the counter is not only dangerous, it makes your work even harder.
Even if you don’t do this yourself, you’ve no doubt seen it done by television chefs and thought “What a practical, sensible idea! Yes! I’ll begin doing that today!”
It’s a good habit to get into, particularly if your countertops are made of tile or a similarly smooth surface. The damp rag provides traction for the cutting board, preventing it from sliding once you get into a heavy-duty chopping session or, if it’s a light board, from jumping up and down. Not only does it make slicing and dicing easier, it helps assure you’ll finish up your work with the same number of digits with which you began.
Because our focus here is education, I’ll break this down into a helpful step-by-step procedure:
- Select towel (color coordination isn’t particularly important but I find beige works very nicely)
- Place towel under running tap and soak
- Wring towel until merely damp
- Place towel on countertop
- Place cutting board on top of towel
- Begin cutting
Tomorrow: We'll put these helpful tips to good use in a knife-work heavy recipe for brown rice pilaf!
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