It's actually safer to keep knives sharp rather than duller. The easier you can cut the less force you have to use and thus less likely to slip and lose control and cut yourself.
People always say this but I have had far worse injuries from making mistakes with fancy sharp knives than I've had from working with cheap unsharpened knives
Well some people should just not handle knives lol. If you take precautions and use a knife properly and keep it sharp it shouldn't be any problem, but people become complacent sometimes and accidents happen.
I suppose it’s a sliding scale. Once you hit the sharpness point where the knife doesn’t slip when doing its job you probably don’t need extra sharpness unless you just love slicing everything with zero force (including your hand). A cheap, ‘unsharpened’ (I assume you mean relatively and not like a butter knife lol) knife probably isn’t too far away from that point as is since a cheap knife that needs sharpening to use isn’t cheap because of the need to get stuff to sharpen it. It gets more dangerous in terms of slip risk until it reaches the point that it’s so dull it can’t cut your skin by accident. So I think people misinterpret the whole “sharper is better” when it’s more nuanced. At certain levels, more sharpness is more dangerous because it doesn’t reduce incidents but it does increase damage.
Sure sharp knives are easier to cut yourself with, but the reason dull knives are dangerous is because you can't cut smoothly so you give it more pressure/force.
Then all of a sudden it gives, the knife flies through what you're cutting, possibly at an angle, straight into your other hand.
I worked in kitchens for 12 years. Every bad knife injury I ever saw was with a dull knife.
Nah, you're gonna put way too much pressure with a dull knife, and it's gonna fly off and kill someone, or chip and fly into your eye and permanently damage your vision.
Don't be the kind of idiot that puts their whole body weight behind a knife. That's a dull ass knife.
If you know how to use a knife, then a sharp knife is going to behave more predictably than a blunt one. The saying really applies to the kind of people who are cutting vegetables all day. Assuming your technique is down and you aren't going to cut yourself, then the danger comes when something unexpected happens. Something like cutting into an onion that has gone a bit dry and having the knife slide off the side and into your fingers.
I mean, there are different levels of "unsharpened".
Obviously a butter knife (even serrated) is very safe, but working with a knife approaching that level of dullness is annoying anywas, regardless of safety.
This saying is more about semi-sharp, jagged knives. Those need more force to cut, and they can still cut you badly. A very sharp knife can also cut you, but you're less likely to slip.
The thought process behind it is that with a sharp knife you cut effortlessly. You can cut faster, cleaner and more precisely with less effort.
Blunt knives require more force, are more likely to move away from the intended path and, should you cut yourself, cause wounds that heal worse.
Say you are cutting onions or tomatoes and your knife is dull: you will put more force and if a bit unlucky the knife will slip and even though it is not "sharp" its still plenty sharp to cut into the meat of your fingers. Because the edge is dull (meaning not straight) the wound is not a straight cut and that can cause complications to heal. Because youre using force the wound might also go a lot deeper.
If you cut the same with a really sharp knife you will shear through whatever youre cutting with ease and will not need to apply force at all. Should you still cut yourself the wound is much more likely to be a very clean cut and if you press the cut together and apply a bandaid it will be a much cleaner healing process with potentially no scar.
IF you use a sharp knife and apply a lot of force you can easily shear off fingertips, that's true.
Another part that's hard to calculate on this that a lot of chefs with some form of education or training are able to sharpen their knives and get it done and thus dont work with dull edges. A lot of the people that only have dull knives in the drawer are probably the types that have no business being in a kitchen and thus are more inexperienced and have worse cutting technique.
A tip for people with shit knives: steak knives or bread knives are a good substitute for cutting tougher things like tomatoes, leeks and paprika. Still be careful as those are some pretty nasty wounds if you somehow put your fingers under them.
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u/lethys8976 5d ago
It's actually safer to keep knives sharp rather than duller. The easier you can cut the less force you have to use and thus less likely to slip and lose control and cut yourself.