Chef Melinda Casady, co-founder of Portland’s Culinary Workshop demonstrates an “a to z” host of knife techniques working with a 10″ chef knife. If you are only going to own one good kitchen knife, Casady recommends using the 10″ knife as the one all-purpose kitchen knife.

In this video, Casady shows show us some of the basics that include: how to hold a kitchen knife properly; how to keep it sharp and when to have it professionally sharpened; and how to use the standard kitchen knife to cut up a variety of different foods. While we often think more about the actual cooking process, much of the work in the kitchen takes place during the prepping phase prior to cooking.

As Casady explains, learning proven techniques for working with a kitchen knife not only will make prepping easier, it will help improve the final cooking results.