On knifery.

Let's talk about knives. They're an essential part of any cook's arsenal - you don't get far in a kitchen without having to cut something. Or smash something. Or slice something or dice something or whatever the fuck. But it's surprising how little the average home cook knows about this sort of thing, how many people cut the shit out of themselves using the wrong tools for the job. So let's see if I can't save a couple of fingers here, huh?

What do I need?
There's an old saying bandied about in culinary school that all a good cook needs is a chef's knife and a paring knife. And you know what? They're pretty much right.

A chef's knife is a straight-backed, curved-edged blade ranging in size from 8" to 12". This is your workhorse, the knife you'll do most of your slicing, chopping, dicing, watermelon peeling, and chicken disassembling with. You want something that fits comfortably in your hand, first and foremost. Something you can grip the shit out of with confidence. Some people use santokus for this kind of work, and those work just fine. Hell, my daily knives are santokus. But I bust out my chef's for when I'm being serious about something I need to rock-chop or when I need to take a bird's spine out.

A paring knife, somewhere around 4" long, is for your detail work. Your scoring of onions to get a fine dice, your deboning of meats, your carving Tony Danza into a squash. I don't know about you guys, but nine times out of ten I'm using a paring knife, I'm holding it like a pen. The other one time I'm peeling something because someone else is using my peeler.

At this point, I'd like to point out the importance of using the right-sized knife for the job. If you're using a paring knife to slice down a bunch of celery or dice garlic, you're doing it wrong. Alternately, if you're using a chef's knife to cut the strings off a roast or peel an apple, put the goddamn thing down and grab something more manageable.

The one addition I'd like to add to the list is a good bread knife. The longer the better. You can't really get good slices from a 10" boule when you're using an 8" bread knife, yeah? Plus the serrated teeth situation really comes in handy with particularly cut-resistant surfaces, like the outsides of tomatoes or the skin of a pork belly. If your chef's knife is meeting resistance, don't force it, just grab something toothy.

How do I take care of them?
Get a honing steel. Seriously.

Next, learn the difference between honing and sharpening. Honing, which you do by alternating strokes along the ridged steel at a steep angle, is realigning the edge. Every time you use your knife, you're making little bends and dents along the edge that increase drag and generally fuck up your cutting power. Using a steel before and after you cut things brings everything back in line. You wouldn't bike on a bent wheel, would you?

In general, wash your knives by hand. Use a sponge. The edge of a knife is a very, very delicate thing, so you probably don't want to be tossing it into the dishwasher, where high-pressure water jets have the poor thing banging around like an airplane passenger in the bathroom during turbulence. Now here, I say in general because if you don't give that much of a shit about the knife, knock yourself out. My daily-use knife is a banger with chips out of the handle that I got for free. 90% of the work I do in my kitchen is slicing cooked meats, chopping aromatics, and other sundry stuff that doesn't actually require a razor-sharp edge, so I just use my beater to carry the brunt of the abuse. Of course, that being said, the INSTANT it can't cut through an onion without me applying a moderate amount of pressure, it's headed off to Valhalla. A dull knife is an extremely dangerous thing to have around.

Keep your clean, honed knives somewhere where the edge won't get banged about, like a knife block or a... well, a knife block.

Now, in order to keep your edge healthy, pay attention to how you cut. Sure, it's fun to use it like a cleaver and just chop the shit out of things, but a) that's incredibly dangerous to start with, and b) you're literally slamming your edge into a flat surface at a high velocity. What part of that seems like a good idea? Take it easy, cowboy. Don't just go up and down. Work it back and forth in long strokes and you'll go a long way in keeping your edge. That's what she said. Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

And while we're on the subject, use a goddamn cutting board. And use something with give, like wood or plastic! I don't know who the fuck came up with glass cutting boards, but what the shit. You may as well be banging your knife into a granite counter or steel tabletop. Save your glass cutting boards for serving canapes, or better yet, hang it up on your wall as a dry erase board.

Well, this knife is fucked. How do I sharpen it?
Sharpening is the act of actually grinding away the steel to create a new edge, as this mildly racist video explains. Sure, you could do it yourself (I like to do this annually with my regularly-used knives), but if you've got a knife store near you, get them professionally done. Face it, no matter how often you practice doing this, you're not going to beat a professionally machine-sharpened edge.

This does bring me to an interesting little trick I've picked up. Say you're traveling, and your unit's kitchenette has, as is typical, a set of ridiculously shitty knives for you to maim yourself with. Being a creature of dignity, you'd like to sharpen the knives at your disposal so you don't lobster yourself trying to take apart a tomato. What do you do? Grab a coffee mug from the cabinet and flip it over. See that coarse ceramic ring on the bottom? Works surprisingly well as a grindstone. Just soak it in water for a bit, then put the mug on a towel so it doesn't slide, and grind away.

So there you go. Take care of your knives, people, and they'll take care of you. Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go cut slices off a meatloaf for sandwiching purposes.