Knife Skills 201

A hands-on class culminating in dinner served with wine and beer. This course is limited to 10 students.

Join 18 Reasons' Program Director and Chef Michelle McKenzie for a class on more advanced knife skills. Students should already have a basic understanding of knife use, care, and safety; participation in our Basic Knife Skills course is encouraged but not required before taking this class. 

In this three-hour course, we will quickly review a few basic knife skills before learning more ambitious and challenging vegetable cuts -- e.g., dicing fennel, segmenting citrus, prepping artichokes, cutting winter pumpkin, etc. -- and how to break down a whole chicken. We will then use the meat and produce prepped during class to cook a meal. Each student will leave with "stock kit," which includes 1/2 of their butchered chicken and an assortment of chopped vegetables and bundled herbs.

Michelle McKenzie is 18 Reason’s Program Director and Chef. She has a knack for making simple food seem special and is full of amazing tips for making every meal memorable. Michelle’s food seems at once healthy and hedonistic, elegant and effortless, and always attainable. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in nutrition and a minor in biochemistry, giving her a deep understanding of food properties and their complex implications within the human body. She later graduated from The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, where she immersed herself in health-supportive cuisine prepared from whole, organic and seasonal foods. Since then, Michelle has worked at some of the best restaurants in the country and, most recently, spent five years directing NextCourse's Eat Ur Veggies program at Mission High School.

Her cookbook Dandelion & Quince: Exploring the Wide World of Unusual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs is available online and at a bookstore near you!