The hand that holds the knife can afford to be dumb. After all, it's got a knife. No one's going to come after it. It's the other hand you need to worry about. You know, the one covered with scars that's holding the onion. That one's fair game!

The trick is to hold the onion, or whatever, with vertical fingers rather than horizontal fingers. You secure the item to be cut with just the tips of your fingers. It feels a little strange at first, but you get used to it. That way, if the knife slips, you'll only nick your fingers rather than trapping one straight out, which means the difference between a Band-Aid and a ride to Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Some people get so scared of cutting themselves that they leave all their knives dull. That way, if they slip, they only get cut a little bit. The trouble with this idea is that as the knives get duller and duller, you get used to putting more and more force into your cuts. Then one day, when you pick up a sharp knife, you're going to bear down with all your might and - well, you get the picture.

The smarter route is to keep your knives sharp and to learn how to use them safely.

One option for the home cook is to buy a quality electric sharpener. The main detraction of the electric sharpeners is that they work by stripping a thin band of metal off to form a new edge. Over time, even just a year or two, your knives will become noticeably smaller.

On the other hand, if you learn how to sharpen knives correctly and have knives of reasonable quality, they should last a lifetime. When sharpening by hand, you're also removing metal from the blade to create a new edge, but nowhere near the amount removed by an electric sharpener.

It's also important to use steel. Steeling the blade will preserve its edge for a much longer time between sharpenings. Steeling, as opposed to honing on a whetstone, doesn't remove material from the blade. The steel corrects the edge at a microscopic level, knocking everything back into alignment. If you steel your knife periodically, it can go for a week or more between sharpenings, even under daily professional use.

In a professional kitchen, cooks take their knives seriously. You'd no sooner pick up and use another cook's knife without asking than you'd pick up another person's gun.

Most American cooks prefer a good German blade, but increasingly you find Japanese blades as well. It makes no difference, what's important is how the blade feels to your hand. One place I worked, the cooks gave their knives names - proud names such as Icecaliber, Hellrazor and The Great Wanker.

Now that was a fun place to work!