Excellent cooks can perform a variety of precise knife cuts quickly and efficiently. This is because they have perfected their knife skills by practicing over and over again. It is important to remember, however, that all successful chefs once started as novices—awkward at first—but with determination and commitment, they developed the first and most essential skill in all of cooking: how to cut using a chef’s knife.

Recipes often use fancy (and sometimes confusing) terms to describe different ways to cut ingredients. Terms such as mince, julienne, chiffonade, and brunoise are all very useful to describe specific cuts, but generally, all you need to learn is how to slice. Dicing and all other cuts will naturally follow. You also need to understand that given their variety of shapes and textures, each ingredient you cut requires a slightly different plan of attack and technique as will be illustrated in this video.

If you’re new to cutting, really focus on the technique and cut very slowly. Focus on the mantra taught in this video. It won’t take very long before you will develop a special bond with your knife—the same bond a craftsperson has with certain tools. Once this happens, cooking will become extremely enjoyable. And for you knife ninjas out there, I bet you’ll still learn a thing or three from this lesson that will raise your game!

And if you haven’t joined the Salad Bar Crusaders group yet, do it for a few weeks as it’s an amazing group to work on your knife skills. You’ll also likely end of loosing weight and feeling more energetic because you’ll be fueling your body with amazing food by default.