Kitchen Excellence
I've spent the last year acclimating myself to ceramic blades in the kitchen.
I still have a tendency to baby them, but I've not chipped or broken one yet.
I even have one at my desk at work for making salad.
Basically, a lot of the bad habits people have with steel knives will hurt one of these. With a steel knife, you can cut stuff on a glass plate, and your edge will turn (bend), and that can be corrected with a few strokes on a steel. It's still a bad habit. With a ceramic blade, that same bad habit will earn you chips and nicks on the edge, which you can't correct with "strokes on a steel."
We have actually picked up some cheap Wal-Mart plastic microwave plates for uses where we're likely to want to cut directly on the plate. The plates eventually get grooves in the surface, and you chuck them and replace. But your knife edge stays good.
You can cut with a ceramic knife on wood and on nylon cutting boards. The "uber TV chef" thing of whacking veggies (that cool "brisk" chopping thing they do) may look neat, but that will also earn you a nick or two on your ceramic blade.
If you're the kind of guy who already doesn't abuse a knife, a ceramic blade really isn't that big a change.
You can't pry with it. Well, duh! I already don't pry with a knife.
You shouldn't chop with it. Uh, okay, I already don't do that with steel.
You really shouldn't use it on glass or crockery plates or directly on a counter top. REALLY? You know, I already don't do that with steel knives.
Now, to be fair, there are some applications where I put lateral stresses on a steel knife, and those are places where I wouldn't use a ceramic. And I'll use a steel knife to strip wire in a pinch. I'd have to be desperate to to try that with ceramic.
Oh, and there is one place that ceramic doesn't seem to do as well, and I don't yet know why: slicing through thick fat. Anyone who understands that, I'm all ears.
Anyway . . .
A final word. When (gently) chopping or mincing stuff with a ceramic knife, it can be tempting if you're in a hurry to use the blade to scrape the stuff you've cut off to one side or onto a plate. If you're going to do that, turn the knife over and use the back of the blade for scraping.
If you think about it, all you have to do with a ceramic is avoid subjecting it to the kind of abuse you already wouldn't dish out to a good steel knife.
If you want a cheap one to play with, the Kitchen Collection stores have recently started carrying a line of $7 ceramic knives. They come with a nylon slip cover for the blade. I have a couple (one at my desk). Very sharp and pointy. I figure if I get stupid with one, I can replace it for $7 and it's a cheap lesson. So far so good. All the veggies tremble in fear. And the steaks, chops and roasts are starting to quiver, too.
