Knife Skills Illustrated – A User′s Manual

Even though this book is over 10 years old it is really good at explaining how to use a knife and goes though all requirements including for left handed users. Is very informative and is excellent. Plain and simple does what is says on the front!!!!

did not disappoint , forget what you thought you knew, learn correctly, plus lots of extra information

Like other reviewers, I feel like having illustrations for both right handed and left handed people is a bit of a waste of paper. My biggest problem with this book is that there absolutely no need to show the cutting of similar vegetables, since the methods are always repetitive. Maybe could be a shorter book.Still a very good complete beginner's guide fit for every aspiring and amateur chef.

Very helpful and explanatory

As a college student doing a catering course, but having some experience of cooking , I was expecting a little bit more from this book. For the complete novice it is an ideal starting point.

Buy it if you like cooking. I loved it as soon as I start going through the pages, drawings are very intuitive and you easily go from theory to pratctice.

If you are tempted to buy a kitchen knife - for yourself or others buy this book first - if necessary give a voucher for a cookshop with the book for the knife. I enjoy cooking but was surprised by the stuff I learnt. Accurate clear diagrams including left handed directions for all techniques.

The information in this book was good but its presentation was drastically flawed (to my way of thinking) by the format used in the right/left handed information content. A technique is excellently described and illustrated, firstly for right handed people....and then for left handed. The only differences was that the word 'right' had beed replaced with the word 'left' and the pictures had been reversed. These left handed pages come immediately after right handed pages and to present it this way was frustrating.When I turn a page I expect the information to continue, not to be repeated. There were many paragraghs/sections that did not use right or left hand terminology or have a picture but it was repeated all the same. It seems that the publishing world has succumbed to the 'minority inclusion' revolution. It would of been better to present the information as right(left) or even to split the book in half and create 2 books in one. The book has 256 pages but I would suggest that only 140 have usable information for either handed people.Conclusion: author gets 5 stars for informaion. Layout gets 1 star. Overall. 2 stars.I have returned the book.

Comprehensive and easy to follow: win, win!

Yup.It's a book.

such a great read. the illustrations are very nice.

I wish that I'd had this book years (read YEARS) ago! This is a very nice approach to basic and advanced knife handling skills. My only wish is that I didn't have to break many, many years of bad habits. Buy and read this whilst you're young. It would have been vastly improved with the inclusion of a DVD to accompany each section.

I could probably live without having to skip ever other page (ones intended for left-handed), but I guess it makes more sense to have one book, than two for different audiences.It teaches you skills that are useful in day to day life if you cook at home at least several times a week. After reading it, I can say that I am more conscious about how I use my knives, and it is a good thing.