With some know-how and practice, a kitchen knife can be your best friend during food preparation, or it can be a potential source of serious injury. Depending on your skill and what you already know about knife safety, it's always a good idea to hone knife safety skills. The first step in kitchen knife safety is purchasing the most quality set of knives you can afford. Avoid sets that have gaps at the joint - where the blade and handle meet. Quality knives should feel heavy and solid in your hand. And most importantly, take the time to learn how to use the knives and care for them.

There are five basic types of kitchen knives:

Chef's Knife

A chef's knife is typically the largest knife in the kitchen, with a wide blade that is eight to 10 inches in length. For the best wear and stability, the knife should have a full tang. In another words, the blade should go all the way through the handle. The chef's knife is one of the most important tools you can own when it comes to cooking. It can be used for slicing, chopping, dicing, mincing, julienne cuts, disjointing large cuts of meat, and even smashing garlic.

Paring Knife

Another often-used kitchen knife is the paring knife, which is generally 3 to 4 inches in length. It is ideal for peeling and coring fruits and vegetables, cutting small objects, and slicing.

Utility Knives

Longer than paring knives but smaller then chef's knife, utility knives are typically 5 to 8 inches long. Utility knives are also referred to as sandwich knives because they are an ideal size for slicing meats and cheeses. Utility knives are good to keep around as extras.

4. Boning Knife

Generally 4 to 5 inches long, the boning knife has a more flexible blade that curves around the meat and bone. With a sharp point and narrow blade, the boning knife is used for removing the bones of poultry, meat and fish.

Bread Knife

Bread knives are usually serrated. It's recommended that a serrated knife have pointed serrations rather than wavy serrations for better control and longer knife life. Consider using a 10-inch serrated bread knife for whole loaves and a six-inch knife for cutting smaller items, such as sandwich buns. When cutting through bread with a bread knife, use a sawing motion.

How to Safely Use a Knife

When using a knife, the most important guideline to follow is to chop the knife slowly and carefully. Always cut away from your body. Use a nonslip surface to cut on and make sure your hands are dry. Fingers on the hand holding the food should be curled under to protect from the knife. The knife should not leave the surface you're working on.

Keeping Your Knives Sharp

Knives that are not kept sharp are unsafe. They can easily slip off food that you are cutting and cut your fingers instead. Keep knives sharp by using a steel, which sharpens knives by straightening out the edge. When sharpening a knife, hold it in your dominate hand and the steel in the other with the steel point pressed into a solid waist-high surface. Holding the knife base at the top of the steel at a 20-degree angle, slowly draw the knife down the length of the steel so the entire blade, from base to tip, moves against the steel. Repeat on the other side. Sharpen the knife like this five to six times. Rinse off and dry immediately.

Storing Your Kitchen Knives

Knives that end up in a drawer will become more quickly than those stored in a knife block or magnetic knife rack. Plus, there's a better chance of injury reaching into a drawer full of knives. High quality knives should be washed by hand and dried immediately. Avoid putting your knives into the dishwasher.

Safecutters Inc. provides an online store of utility knife box cutters for opening shipping boxes and shipping packages, as well as safety knives to open moving boxes and packages.

For more information about Klever Kutter and Klever Koncept and other Safecutters products, visit http://www.safecutters.com.

Chopsticks is used many cultures in Asia and it has been around for thousands of years while the fork is relatively new and only used by Europeans. I wonder what Europeans used before, oh, yes, the hand and fingers. Most of the world still uses hand and fingers to eat.

Chopsticks works like two fingers grabbing food. Forks were only invented after they had good knowledge of metallurgy.

Anyway, imagine when you go camping, you have no fork, and what do you do? Use your hand to pick up your food. But it's too hot, so you grab a stick!

Westerns always feel curious about chopsticks, and find it impossible to eat western food. The food culture difference between east and west explains the large difference with dining tools.

What westerns worries doesn't realise is in Chinese cooking, everything is sliced and diced into smaller pieces before cooking so Chinese people don't need forks and knives. Western cooking dictates chunks of meat or vegetable that has not been diced so that is why most Westerners use forks and knives - because they need to!

It's a cultural thingy. It's the way they serve their food. They actually use chopsticks and spoon. Generally, for a family meal, all the different dishes (meat, fish, vegetable, soup) are placed in the center of the table and each diner will have a bowl of rice. The meat and veggies will have been chopped up into smaller pieces. So they use chopstick to alternatively pick the dishes they want followed by shoveling rice into their mouths.

Westerners generally serve large chunk of meat individually and thus need fork and knife to assist in cutting these into smaller pieces before placing into the mouth.

There are several things to remember when you use chopsticks.

- Don’t dig in the food on a plate but just get the piece which you want to get

- Don’t pick one piece then drop it back in the plate and change to another piece

- Don’t let your chopsticks be covered with food juice or residue

- Don’t use chopsticks to beat any utensils to make any noise

- Don’t wave your chopsticks

- Don’t use chopsticks like forks

- Don’t use chopsticks as toothpicks

- Don’t lick or **** your chopsticks

- Don’t put chopsticks vertically in rice in a bowl since it resembles the incense sticks for the dead

-Particularly after SARS, it is more common these days that people use a pair of common chopsticks for fetching the food on the plates. Don’t forget to swap your own chopsticks with the ones provided when getting the food because of hygiene reasons.

In a Chinese meal, an even number of dishes should be ordered. Odd numbers of dishes would be appropriate only for occasions such as the meal after a funeral.

The best dish should be put in front of the most important person in order to show your respect. Chicken head or duck head on a plate should not point at guests. The big bowl of soup should be placed in the middle.

With chopsticks you can practically pick up anything with them, without a mess and neatly. Chopsticks are easier and quicker for me to use while eating, and also they are more agile. With chopsticks you can pick up many side dishes; mix and stuff in my mouth with ease. Forks break your food because you have to stab it. Forks are for baby. Once you get the hang of chopsticks, you will find it much easier to do things with. Kitchen and dinning tools are all connected to different food culture.

It’s a culture thing, each tableware has its own merits, we can’t say which is good or not. It all depends on totally different food culture between east and west, From a Chinese perspective, chopsticks are more handy. Why not try for your own and decide for yourself.

Part 2 of LoZ: 4 Swords Misadventures Episode 2.

I'm looking to buy a high quality set of Chefs knives for someone who is of a professional Chef standard. I'd like some advice on what I should look for and if any Chefs out there have any recommendations?

I have a fairly expensive set of kitchen knives that are getting rust spots on them. They are not dishwasher safe, so I hand wash them. I always hand dry, but even if they sit in the sink until the end of the day when I wash them, they accumulate rust. What is the best way to remove the spots.