My ginsu skills ginsuck

Dear Tricia, What is the proper way to hold a knife?

I'm glad you asked, random stranger. First of all, I need to preface this post by saying that you never ever ever (ever ever ever) need to invest in a set of expensive, differently sized kitchen knives all stuck inside a fancy wooden block with a celebrity chef's name on it. You'll never need all those different sizes, and once you put clean wet knives in the block, bacteria will start to grow in the knife slots. The only knives you ever need to purchase for your home kitchen are a good chef's knife (also called a French knife), which is your basic, 8-10" large all-purpose-cutting knife, and a small paring knife. The rest are unnecessary. Save yourself some dough for cocktails.

In order to properly show you how to hold a knife, I attached a lot of pictures to this post. Please ignore the DBK logo on the knife: I am not endorsing Daniel Bouloud. I think his knives suck.

Wrap your thumb around the bottom of the handle and your fingers around the other side of the handle. If you haven't at least figured this part out on your own, I'm surprised that you even had the brain cells to go pee by yourself today. Your index finger will not be wrapped around the handle: it's going to hook across the top of the blade.

Like this:




The reason you're hooking your index finger around the top of the blade is to give you more control. Letting your finger ride straight on top only gives your wrist more wiggle room to mess up what you're cutting. Have some control, why don't you?!


See? Your index finger needs to be wrapped around the top of the blade for full control. NOT laying on top of the blade. Here are some other improper ways to hold your knife:




Remember, bricks and trees aren't the best cutting boards, and neither are your hands. Stay clear of them.