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How To Master 5 Basic Cooking Skills – Gordon Ramsay

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Gordon Ramsay strips away the reality-TV theatrics and goes back to the cutting board, teaching the five moves every home cook actually needs.

Released March 7, 2016, on Ramsay’s official YouTube channel, “How To Master 5 Basic Cooking Skills” pulls together five clips from his television series Gordon’s Ultimate Cookery Course into one compilation. There’s no shouting, no “IT’S RAW,” no Hell’s Kitchen pressure cooker — just a chef walking through the fundamentals he thinks separate a competent cook from someone who’s just guessing.

• The video covers five specific techniques: chopping an onion, cooking rice, filleting a salmon, sharpening a knife, and cooking pasta.
• Ramsay’s rice method uses equal parts water to rice, whole aromatics like cardamom pods and star anise, and a strict no-stirring, lid-on rule while it steams.
• For salmon, he uses a flexible filleting knife to run along the skin and remove pin bones, breaking a whole side down into portions.

The Onion, Rebuilt From the Root Up

Ramsay opens with the knife skill most home cooks butcher without realizing it. His technique keeps the root end of the onion intact deliberately — it’s the structural anchor that holds the layers together while you slice, instead of everything sliding apart into a mess on the board. The guiding hand curls into a claw shape, knuckles forward, so the blade rides against the hand rather than toward fingertips.

It’s a small adjustment that changes everything about speed and safety. Once the onion is halved and the root is holding it steady, Ramsay works through parallel horizontal and vertical cuts before the final chop, turning what looks like chaos into a clean, even dice in seconds.

Rice Without the Guesswork

Ramsay treats rice as a technique problem, not a side-dish afterthought. His measurement is simple — equal parts rice to water — but the real work is in what goes into the pot alongside it. Cardamom pods and star anise go in whole, perfuming the grains as they steam rather than getting stirred through and fished out later.

The instruction he repeats is the one people ignore: lid on, no stirring, no peeking. Lifting the lid lets steam escape and throws off the cook time, while stirring breaks the starch structure and turns fluffy grains into something closer to porridge. Readers looking at how whole spices work beyond flavor might also find some overlap with the way turmeric and other kitchen staples get discussed in this closer look at turmeric.

Filleting a Whole Side of Salmon

This is the most technical segment of the five. Ramsay works a flexible filleting knife along the skin of a whole side of salmon, using the blade’s give to hug the contours of the fish rather than cutting straight through and wasting flesh. From there he moves into pin-bone removal and portioning, breaking one side down into individual, plate-ready cuts.

Keep the root intact, curl your fingers into a claw, and let the knife do the work — that’s the whole onion technique in one sentence, and it’s the one Ramsay insists separates a home cook from someone who’s just hacking away at dinner.

The Steel and the Boil

Sharpening gets its own segment because Ramsay treats a dull knife as a safety hazard, not just an inconvenience — a blade that slips because it’s not biting cleanly is more dangerous than one that’s properly honed. He demonstrates the correct angle against the honing steel, a consistent, controlled stroke rather than aggressive scraping.

Pasta closes the compilation, and it’s built entirely around water. Ramsay calls for a rolling boil, heavy salting, and a splash of olive oil, then tests the pasta by feel before draining rather than trusting a clock. Al dente, in his method, is a texture you check for, not a timer you set.

The Contrast With His TV Persona

What stands out watching all five clips back to back is the tone. This is Ramsay the multi-Michelin-star mentor — patient, specific, repeating the same small cues (claw grip, lid on, test by feel) rather than the combustible personality viewers know from screaming matches over undercooked scallops. It’s the same chef, just teaching instead of judging.

None of these five techniques is complicated on its own — that’s the point Ramsay’s making by putting them in one video. Onion, rice, salmon, knife, pasta: get those five right and, according to Gordon’s Ultimate Cookery Course, you’ve covered the moves that show up in nearly every dinner most people actually cook.