It was a Sunday afternoon at the end of September, and I was cutting sweet potatoes for a sheet pan of roasted lunches. Halfway through a big one, the blade stuck. I rocked it the way I've done a thousand times, heard a small tick and felt the knife go loose in my hand. A hairline crack ran up the blade from the spot where it meets the bolster, the thick collar of steel in front of the handle.
Nobody got hurt, and I want to say that first. A blade that lets go in the middle of a cut is how people end up getting stitches.
That knife came off our wedding registry in June 2012: an 8-inch German-style chef's knife, heavy, thick at the heel, with a full bolster. Fourteen years, most of them daily. I wrapped it in cardboard and tape, wrote SHARP on it in marker, and Jack, newly nine, insisted on saying a few words over the trash can.
Here's why it happened. A raw sweet potato is dense enough to grip a blade like a vise. When the knife stuck and I rocked it sideways, all that force went to one point, the narrowest place where the blade joins the bolster. Do that for fourteen years and steel gets tired. A knife is a wedge, not a lever. I know that. I teach that in knife safety every fall. I did it anyway.
What I looked for
- 8 inches. Long enough for a watermelon, short enough for my cutting board and my hand.
- A thinner blade. A thick blade pushes a sweet potato apart until it splits or sticks. A thin one slides through. That was the real lesson of the whole episode.
- No full bolster. On my old knife, the bolster kept me from sharpening the last inch of the edge, so the heel got duller every year.
- A handle that fits a wet hand. I held about ten knives at a kitchen store in Cool Springs and chopped the air with every one. The clerk was very patient.
- Steel I can sharpen at home, and not so hard that it chips the first time it meets a chicken bone.
- Under $100. Firm.
What I bought
It came down to three. A forged German knife a lot like my old one was on sale for $99.95, which is under $100 right up until you add tax. A Victorinox with a plastic handle, about $50, the kind you see in plenty of restaurant kitchens, felt light and sensible. And a thinner Japanese-style 8-inch with a plain wooden handle and no bolster was $84.99.
I bought the $84.99 one. A knife isn't groceries, so it carried Tennessee's full sales tax instead of the reduced food rate, and I walked out at about $93. If the Victorinox had fit my hand a little better, I'd have saved the difference and been just as happy. I wouldn't talk anyone out of it.
Four days in, it has handled two more sweet potatoes, a whole chicken and a pile of onions for chili. It goes through the sweet potatoes without the old wedge-and-crack feeling, which is exactly why I picked it.
How I keep it sharp
- Hone before I cook. A few light strokes per side on a ceramic rod, about $25. Honing straightens the edge that rolls over with use. It doesn't take off much metal.
- Sharpen on a stone every couple of months. For fourteen years I used a pull-through sharpener, which is part of why the old knife's heel was such a mess. This time I bought a two-sided whetstone for $35 and a clip-on angle guide for $8 until my hands learn the angle on their own.
- Hand wash, dry, put away. Never the dishwasher, never left in the sink. Cast iron taught me that years ago.
- Wood or plastic boards only. Glass and stone will dull an edge in a week.
- It lives on the magnetic strip by the stove from my July drawer clean-out, not loose in a drawer.
- Sweet potatoes get a flat side. I slice a thin piece off one side so it sits still, then cut straight down. No rocking, no prying.
All in, that's about $93 for the knife, $35 for the stone, $25 for the rod and $8 for the guide, a little over $160. It stung. But if this one lasts as long as the last one did, it works out to about $11 a year, and I plan to get my fourteen years out of it. I also plan to quit prying.
