The plasma knives are vaguely similar to tools currently used in radiosurgery, but rather than heating tissue directly and damaging it, they penetrate and cauterise it safely. While tools like this are great because they have the potential to save many lives in situations where proper hospital care is not an option, let’s be honest: most of us just plain want some mini lightsabers. [Wired]

On Choosing a Knife
Those all-in-one knife sets you can get at a department store are for suckers. “You really shouldn’t buy a set with 42 knives,” says Weinstein, “since you’ll probably only need five or six.” Here are the useful knives, in descending order of importance:

Chef’s Knife: This is your all-purpose knife, so don’t skimp on it—get a forged knife, which is moulded through a process of pounding heated metal into shape and treating it, rather than stamped out of a sheet. Chef Weinstein suggests (mandates, really) a minimum of 20 centimetres, and preferably 25. Just because you have small hands or uncertain kitchen skills doesn’t mean you should get a smaller knife, since all it’ll do is decrease your leverage and “make the whole job much more difficult.”

Buying a chef’s knife can be difficult, but the key tip is to remember that this knife is all about weight and balance. “It shouldn’t be blade heavy or handle heavy,” says Weinstein.

Paring Knife: The paring knife is about five to 10 centimetres long and used for extremely delicate work (think small fruits like grapes and berries) as well as smaller items like shallots.

Use a honing steel: A honing steel, which is that long cylindrical piece of metal all too often mistaken for a sharpener, is actually used to realign your knife’s blade. Use it “practically every time you use your straight-edge knife,” says Weinstein. “It should only take about 15 seconds, done properly.” The key is to anchor the steel perpendicular to your countertop, and slice both sides of the knife across it at a 22-degree angle.

Avoid the dishwasher: Knives and cutting boards alike should be cleaned in the same way. Immediately after use, clean with soap, hot water and a non-abrasive scrubber (sponges are fine here). Never stick a good knife in the dishwasher: The force of the water can dull the blade, and it’s never a good idea to have an extremely sharp pointy object rattling around a dishwasher. Knife handles could potentially warp, too, because of the heat.

Take your knives to a professional sharpener: Don’t use a home sharpening machine unless you feel your knife has wronged you in some way and must be punished. Send your knives away to a professional sharpener about once a year to have your blade re-shaped.

On Cutting Boards
There’s a lot of misunderstanding about cutting boards. Chef Weinstein says only one material will do: Wood. Not plastic (”It’ll dull your knife”), not bamboo (”It’s harder than wood and lousy for your knife”), and certainly nothing like stone (”Are you crazy?!”).

Go for a nice hard maple board—it’s just about the best investment you can make after a good chef’s knife. “A good maple cutting board will go into your will,” says Weinstein. Plus, if you’re doing some hard cutting and you end up gouging the wood, a maple cutting board can simply be sanded down and re-seasoned with mineral oil and be good as new.

Just don’t ever stick it in your dishwasher—wash it with warm soapy water immediately after use, and oil it up with mineral oil whenever it starts looking too dry.

How to Hold a Knife
Chef Weinstein’s instruction for actually using a knife is all about relaxation. Keep your arms in a relaxed position and choke up on the knife: Your thumb and forefinger should be pinching the actual blade, not wrapped around the handle. It’ll take some adjustment to hold the knife this way, but Weinstein reminds us, “You have to use the knife correctly before you can cut anything.”

The actual motion of the blade is much more a sliding, fluid movement than a choppy-chop staccato rhythm. “It’s all about relaxing and following through, just like golf or tennis,” says Weinstein.

These tips are a good primer, but once you’ve got the basics down, you’ve still got to practice. Over and over again. Mince about a few hundred cloves of garlic, chop a couple dozen stalks of celery, and dice an army’s worth of onions—more than anything else, repeated use of proper knife skills will save you time, keep your fingers safe, and improve your cooking. Thanks Chef!

For more than 20 years, Norman Weinstein, a chef-instructor at New York’s Institute of Culinary Education, has taught everyone from enthusiastic amateur cooks (including our own Wilson Rothman) to professional chefs how to select and use knives. He is also the author of Mastering Knife Skills. He has been profiled in Wine Spectator and the New York Times Magazine, and has appeared on the Food Network. The 2003 honoree of the New York Association of Culinary Professionals, Weinstein lives in New York City.

Note: The images of knives above do not represent any particular brand endorsements by Chef Weinstein or Gizmodo. They are merely used to indicate general shapes of the discussed knives. Top image from Wikimedia Commons.

Taste Test is our week-long tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.

So J.A. Henckels commissioned designer Aaron Root to come up with a solution for those who’d like to expand their wares a knife at a time, and Root completely nailed the solution.

You buy a knife, it comes with a one-knife block. (That unto itself is pretty neat.) But this block also has magnets that allow it to stick to other blocks…or hey, even the fridge.

Hopefully, now that Henckels has the concept in their hands, they’ll actually put the design into production (even though I’ll be a WÜSTHOF man 4 life). [Aaron Root via Yanko via DVICE]

Taste Test is our week-long tribute to the leaps that occur when technology meets cuisine, spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tastier and safer to the Earl Grey-friendly replicators we impatiently await in the future.

And really, why not? It may only be a concept, but if you have ever seen someone cut up meat with a hunk of obsidian or flint you know that ancient tools were wicked sharp. Plus, the fact that many survive today is a testament to durability. Although I think a handle might be in order here. I mean, I don’t want to make it too easy to chop my finger off. [Matthias Kaeding via Dezeen via Boing Boing Gadgets]

As the designer notes:

Mr Cornock, 42, from Swindon, said that the knife will cut vegetables, but will make it almost impossible to stab someone to death and will reduce the risk of accidental injuries.

He said: “It can never be a totally safe knife, but the idea is you can’t inflict a fatal wound. Nobody could just grab one out of the kitchen drawer and kill someone.

Really? Couldn’t you go all Jack the Ripper on someone’s throat with it? At any rate, if your wife or husband decides to replace your current knives with these anti-stab versions, that really says something about how they feel about you. Either they have the wrong impression, or they are on to you. [New Point Knives and Times Online via Fark]

This gentleman is extremely upset about his MacBook Air’s damaged hinge, so what does he do? He stabs it in the face, obviously.

Hope as I may, this video is way, way too dumb to be some kind of viral ad for Lenovo. So, guy, here’s some of that attention you wanted, I guess! [Macenstein]

If you could bottle the masculine and industrious musk of MacGyver in a bottle, it would be Swiss Unlimited from knife-maker Victorinox.

The aroma is described as a natural “Swiss essence with notes of wooded silver fir, alpine herbs, absinthe.” It actually sounds fairly appealing, although I would have expected “leather jacket, pocket knife and mullet” to be among those notes. The “scent of adventure” is available now for around $US55. [Colette via OhGizmo]

Okay, I guess that’s really just another way of showing people how rich you are. But look at how smoothly it slices through that cucumber! I think smell an Iron Chef guest spot, maybe on an episode with white truffles and gadgets as the secret ingredient. [Gear TV/ComON - Thanks Niels!]

Sure, it may be designed for use in the snow, where a normal, rubber-footed cane wouldn’t be too stable, we all know what it’s really designed for: stabbin’. Simply push the button at the top to push the spike out at the bottom, and prepare to severely punish any mugger who thinks a little old lady is easy pickings. [Amazon via Book of Joe]

Closed this weapon is 12cm, and the blade is stainless steel. The kit comes complete with three darts and a handy nylon pouch for ninjas on-the-go. [Swords, Knives and Daggers via Nerd Approved]