Good knife skills are the base of any good dish. Consistent cuts mean balance in a dish whether it’s onions or apples too much of either in any bite can ruin a dish. For a dish like our healthful chicken salad a small dice of apples and pears offer the perfect sweetness to balance the sour and spice. So get into the kitchen and grab a few apples because practice makes perfect and before you know it you’ll be slicing and dicing with the best of them.

First trim the fruit of the apple away from the core by making four cuts around the core in a square pattern:

one

two

three and four.

Next take one of the pieces and slice to the desired thickness, being sure to keep the slices together when you cut.

Stack the apple slices on their side and slice again to same thickness to form a grid and cut the apples into thin sticks called a julienne.

Finally to cut the apples into a dice, slice the apples again lengthwise to the same thickness of the first two cuts to form a cube.