Do your hands look like they’ve been holding onto barbed wire after a weekend filled with some heavy-duty cooking? From Chow and Jeffrey Elliot, coauthor of the Complete Book of Knife Skills, here are five knife safety tips to help your hands ready for a hand lotion commercial rather than one for antiseptic and bandaids.
Five Tips:
- Don’t wear jewelry in the kitchen – your knife can get caught on a ring or its handle hung up in a bracelet.
- Make sure your knife is visible – how many times have you tossed it into the sink where it gets covered up by dirty dishes and pots and pans? You don’t know who is going to reach into the sink — stick a hand in and whoops!!!
- Don’t walk around your kitchen with a knife in your hand. If you do — don’t hold it in your dominant hand because if you slip and start to fall the tendency is to reach out to grab onto something or to break your fall with that hand. Bad news if you have a sharp knife in it. Hold it in your less dominant hand with the point down and the blade facing backwards.
- When you hand a knife to someone it should be presented with the handle facing him or her so the handle can be grabbed. The best way to hand off a knife is to put it down with the handle facing toward the other person. If you can’t put the knife down, still offer it to the other person with the handle of the knife, not the blade, facing him or her.
- Make sure your knife is sharp. A dull knife is a dangerous knife because your have to force it through food. A sharp knife cuts cleanly and safely.