Cooking isn't a skill you can pick up through reading alone. Watch chefs, enthusiastic home cooks, and even a surprise celebrity guest demonstrate cooking skills everyone can use in this roundup of 10 great instructional cooking videos. 10. Cut a mango A very helpful father shows you how to find the "axis" of a mango, giving you the most efficient yield of a delicious summer treat. (Original post) 9. Separate an egg There are many ways to extract egg whites, yolks, and shells separately, as WikiHow details, but the easiest method involves the tools you've got built into the ends of your arms. Bay-area video blogger Hilarie shows us how to use your hands and three bowls to separate eggs into elements for baking, health-conscious recipes, or those who just like to keep things orderly. (Original post) 8. Sauce pasta the right way Italian chef extraordinaire and lover of food talk Mario Batali explains to the Serious Eats film crew the way to sauce pasta—which, for most people, means less of the red stuff. "What you want to eat when you eat a bowl of pasta ... is pasta." (Original post) 7. Gordon Ramsay's "Perfect Scrambled Eggs" If the idea of smooth, almost creamy eggs makes you cry foul, you won't dig Hell's Kitchen star and renowned British chef Gordon Ramsay whips up what he calls the "perfect scrambled egg," with crème fraîche (or sour cream or yogurt as a fill-in) and absolutely no overcooking. Otherwise, looking at the results, you might join with your Lifehacker editors in hoping for a free weekend morning to try this out and make "the missus" or mister very happy indeed. (Original post) 6. Slice and dice an onion like a pro Rochester chef Art Rogers demonstrates for Lifehacker how to get consistent slices using the "knuckle guide" technique, and then neat, consistent, less-messy diced onion with horizontal and vertical cuts. Yeah, the video's a little shaky and has its brief out-of-focus moments, but the knife skills are front and center. (Original post) 5. Pit a ripe avocado Gina shows off her California livin' skills by showing the easy way to pit a ripe avocado and not lose any of that precious precursor to guacamole. (Original post) 4. Mince and crush garlic Rouxbe, a high-resolution, seriously detailed food tutorial site, is sponsored by the Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver, and it shows in the step-by-step nature of their videos. Their "Drill-down" on mincing and crushing garlic offers a great close-up view of what a knife should be doing when the recipe calls for either of those things. To be honest, one editor learned that "crushed" doesn't just involve smacking a whole garlic clove with the flat of a knife, so a few other of Rouxbe's free sample videos (full access requires a subscription) might get a viewing later this weekend. (Original post) 3. Make sushi rice This video, pulled from VideoJug's well-organized Food & Drink section, demonstrates perhaps the most crucial and time-consuming task of sushi making—getting the rice right. Cooking just long enough and using a fan properly are elegantly demonstrated, and by the end, you'll know enough to buy some seaweed wraps and ingredients and try out your first few rolls. 2. Well-done hamburgers that aren't hockey pucks Whether you're eating healthier, accomodating a food safety fan, or cooking for the little guys, sometimes you've got to grill your hamburgers all the way through. America's Test Kitchen, the PBS cooking show from the creators of Cook's Illustrated, demonstrates the best way to cook a well-done hamburger. Like their magazine recipes and tips, this comes by way of lots and lots of trials and tests, and it's a pretty ingenious work-around: 80 percent beef that seems fatty, but mostly cooks off; a mixture of bread, milk, seasoning, and A1 steak sauce tossed into the beef; and a small divot pressed into each burger's top to make cooking more consistent. Be sure to click the video for the larger view. 1. Chicken on a throne (starring Christopher Walken) We are not made of stone, and we could not resist including a clip of America's most surreal superstar, humbly demonstrating in his own kitchen how he makes roasted chicken with pears. More important than the crazy vocal cadence or his recipe, though, is the technique, sometimes referred to as beer can chicken or "chicken on a throne," though technically known as indirect grilling. By resting a bird on a moisturized stand (a flap of fat in Walken's case, and a can of soda, beer, or water in most others) and keeping it hoisted, you get juicy interior meat, crispy skin, and a kind of freakishly fun sight to show guests while the meal's cooking. Thanks for reading, watching, and getting hungry with us. Check out our week-long Eat to Live coverage for more inspiring how-to material, and feel free to link and embed your favorite food how-to clips in the comments (explained down the page at our power user's guide).

I am not really a fan of these “literal videos” where you change the lyrics of the song to describe what is exactly being done in the video. But this video by dascottjr is brilliant! His witty lyrics got me rolling on the floor laughing. Makes me wonder what the hell were they thinking when they made the original music video in the first place. I was going over the comments in YouTube, and I found one comment who was a bit disappointed with the singer because she couldn’t reach the high notes. Actually, I was wondering how she pulled this off without laughing. After watching this video, I will never sing this song in karaoke. If I ever do, I’ll either laugh out loud or sing the literal version instead. Wahaha!

(You can get a text version of the lyrics under the cut.) Here’s the literal lyrics! (Pan the room.) Random use of candles, empty bottles, and cloth, and can you see me through this fan? (Slo-mo dove.) Creepy doll, a window, and what looks like a bathrobe. Then, a dim-lit shot of dangling balls. (Metaphor?) Close-up of some candles, and dramatically posing. Then, stock footage of a moon in the sky. (Bottle shot.) Messing up my close-up with a floating blue curtain. Now, let’s see who’s coming in from outside. (Double doors open) Why aren’t I reacting in this shot? (Ringo Starr? Lined eyes.) Guess I should be acting, but I’m not. (Doors ajar.) Wander through a hall with doors that magically open, and this classroom has a fan. (Open shirts.) Now it’s getting creepy. You can tell by my staring, it’s a long time since I’ve been with a man. (Stupid chair.) Emo Kid is throwing Slo-Mo Dove at my face. I guess that means that he just flipped me the bird. (Locker room.) Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang of dancing ninja men who know how to twirl. (Spin around. Ninjas!) Then, a bunch of preppies make a toast. (Drinking wine. Douchebags!) Most of it just ends up on the floor. And they shouldn’t fence at night or they’re gonna hurt the gymnasts. Why do they play football inside? Here’s another shot of fencing. And I’ve mostly been lit from behind. Watch these shadows run off. I walk onto a terrace where I think I’m alone. But Arthur Fonzarelli’s got an army of clones. (Fonzie’s been cloned!) They do the Macarena, but I’m still not impressed. They beg for me to dance with them, but not in this dress! I’ll pose like Rocky tonight! I’m running up a bunch of stairs. (Strip football, and surprise mirror!) Here’s where I pretend to be Eva Peron. Look at me, I’m lifting my arms. There’s nothing else to shoot, so zoom camera under this arch. Leaning on myself, because there’s two of me here. But now there’s only one on this shot. I pull my feathered hair whenever I see floating cloth. [Instrumental, but dascottjr inserted some literal dialogue.] (Blind possessed choir boys.) Get out of my way! I’ve gotta pee! (Zombie cult!) Never mind. I just went on the floor! Now I need to find a mop! (Look at me now!) Emo Kid wears too much makeup. Now, watch a bunch of half-naked guys (Hairless chests.) As they dance around in diapers. And I’ve joined the Glee Club of the Damned. (Reference joke!) Look, the fog machine’s on! What kind of private school would let in these kind of guys? It started out as Hogwarts, now it’s Lord of the Flies! (I hated that book.) I’m swaying side to side. These dancers need to stop. The gayest man on earth would call this over the top! I whip my head to the right! I’ll never go to church again. (I think I lost a contact lens.) When did spazzing out qualify as a dance? Kneeling like I want to throw up. What the effing crap? That angel guy just felt me up! Here’s a line of guys. I was wearing a dress. But now they’ve got me wearing a suit. (One kid’s running late. I think he’s too young for this school.) I’m totally shaking his hand. (Mullet with headlights? Over-surprised guy. Weirded out…)

Windows only: If you've ever needed to extract a small section of a much longer video to share with friends or family, Free Video Cutter 1.1 is a dead-simple solution. The application cuts, splits, or clips your large video files into smaller, easier to share files.This lightweight video editing tool works with several popular input video formats (including MPEG, DivX, Xvid, AVI, WMV, and MOV) and supports six different output formats. That's about all it does—simple but effective. As the name suggests, Free Video Cutter is a free download, Windows only. Free Video Cutter [via Techblissonline Dot Com]