Knife Skills I: Fluting Mushrooms

I'm always impressed with the details in cooking, but what always gets me is how chefs consistently make their food uniform during prep. How do they make it so even? How long have they been working on their knife skills? Does it even matter?

When you think about it, it really does. When the food is the same shape and size, it cooks uniformly and you avoid having things being done at different times. Plus, it just plain looks more appetizing. But moreover, good knife skills goes deeper than that. Uniformity means that the cook put time into the food and it's a way to tell the diner that they're worth the trouble. It shows that the cook takes detail seriously.

In my quest to better my knife skills, I've decided to start a series of posts dedicated to different techniques. So with my first post in the series, I wanted to do something challenging: fluting mushrooms.


So what does a fluted mushroom even look like?

Fluted Mushroom caps (not mine)

It really doesn't do anything for cooking, but it makes them look cool and its a pretty hard cut to learn and cook. You need a really sharp paring knife and patience.

First you take a mushroom:


Then you take your sharpest paring knife and cut out trenches by moving the blade along the skin of the cap:

This...

To this

Then you repeat the pattern around the cap:

And eventually you end up with this:

It looks pretty cool and it took me forever to get the pattern down. I'm pretty excited about it though.