Jim Davis: Hi! Chef Jim Davis here for Harris Teeter. Today, we are going to talk about knife safety. How to use all the various knives in your kitchen safely so that you don't hurt yourself. It's often been said that the most dangerous knife in the kitchen is a dull knife while the safest knife in the kitchen is the sharp knife.

So, it's important that you maintain the knife and keep them well but use them safely. For instance, always use a cutting board. Now, this happens to be wooden cutting board but a plastic cutting board such as Polypropylene or Styrene are good cutting board.

The other thing is use a glass or hard surfaced cutting board. It's very hard on the edge of your knife if you use a hard surface cutting board like granite or marble or glass or hard like say anti-plastic. When you lay your knife down on the cutting board, when you're through making a cut, lay it down so that the edge of the knife is away from you, so that you don't inadvertently scrape your knuckles across the sharp blade and cut the back of your hand. The other thing is the grip of the knife is very important. It leads to a safe handling. Always grab the knife with the thumb and a finger on the blade like that and then wrap the rest of your fingers around the handle. That's gives you a good solid grip so when you put the knife down, it stays where you want it to stay. If you are lady and you have a very small hand then, grab the knife the same way with just backup on the handle so that the thumb and the forefinger are gripping the top part of the handle and then wrap your fingers around the rest of the handle. Not quite as solid but a good alternate, if you have a small hand.

As you are taking care of your knives and using them in the kitchen, make sure that you store your knives where the edge of the blade can't be damaged. Don't run them through the dishwasher. Not because the dishwasher is going to hurt them but because the force of the water bangs them around and bangs them against other implements and other dishes and wracks in the dishwasher.

So it's very important, do not ever put a good sharp knife in the dishwasher for that reason alone. The other thing is that you need to make sure that you store your knives safely. You want to use a magnetic rack to keep them up of the floor out of the hand away of children, that's fine.

You can get spacers for your cabinet drawers that will hold your knives or even a wood block, that you can pick up at the hardware store or the home store will be a good safety implement to hold your knives.