The Common Knife Blunder To Avoid When Using A Cutting Board

So you've just finished slicing up an onion. Maybe it'll go into a pot to for some French onion soup, or perhaps you're going to caramelize them and put them on a pissaladière, a French-style pizza. But for now, it's sitting in an unruly pile, having taken over most of your cutting board. No worries — you'll just scrape it all up with the blade of your knife and deposit it with a flourish into the pan. For some reason, it's almost instinctive to use our knives to tidy up the board, sweeping ingredients into neat little piles. But here's a P.S.A. for you — please don't. For the sake of you and your knife, seriously, don't.

Scraping your knife along the cutting board like that is a fast track to ruining your blade, sometimes even irreparably. Knives are designed with a purpose — they're meant to go up and down, slicing through whatever it is you're chopping, thanks to the delicate, incredibly thin beveled edge. Scraping the knife along the board will grind down that edge, eventually leaving your knife dull and perhaps even risking chips. A dull knife isn't just useless — it's dangerous. So, it's worth taking care of them properly.

So, what should you do instead? Well, a start would be to simply flip your knife around. Unless you're using some kind of double-edged knife (or, like, a sword), your kitchen knife is going to have one beveled cutting edge and a flat (or at least dull) edge on the other side, called the spine. While the delicate cutting edge of the knife is no friend to the board, the back of it (a resourceful tool in its own right) is perfectly suited for it. Scrape away!

You could go one better and buy a bench scraper, an old chef's favorite designed for exactly this purpose. It's one of the most versatile kitchen tools there is, and something you'll see in pretty much every professional kitchen (though surprisingly rarely at home) — it'll change the way you cook for good.

Finally, if the damage is done and you find yourself with a dull knife and no sharpener or whetstone, don't panic. Just grab your nearest plate and use this clever restaurant trick to sharpen knives on the fly: on the base of the plate, there will likely be a little unfinished ring of ceramic. It's a pretty good approximation of a whetstone if you're in a pinch. Just run the knife back and forth along it a few times, and you'll be back to chopping in no time.