Cooks can get a handle on knife skills with regular practice and high ...

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Cooks can get a handle on knife skills

Chef Angelo Cattaneo sharpens his favorite 8-inch knife every day. And when he uses his cylindrical sharpening steel, he finds the “sweet spot” when he pulls the blade along it at a 20-degree angle.

“It actually sings to you when it’s sharp,” he said. When the knife is moved to a 40-degree angle, the noise the blade makes has a much lower pitch, he noted. “It takes skill and practice.”

Cattaneo teaches knife skills at his new cooking school, Flambe Gourmet on Madison’s East Side. Such knife skills, he said, are essential for anyone who wants to succeed in the kitchen.

“It’s dangerous if you don’t know how to handle knives correctly,” he said. “And if knives aren’t very sharp, it’s even more dangerous.”

It’s not just the possibility of lopping off a finger. “It can cause hand cramps, calluses and smashed produce,” he said.

In addition to the sharpening steel, Cattaneo also hones his knives with a rectangular whetstone soaked in water, pulling the blade back to front at a 20-degree angle. And that’s not all.

About three times a year he takes his knives to Bill Peterson at Wisconsin Cutlery, on University Avenue, to have them ground professionally. Peterson built a grinding wheel that weighs about 900 pounds, one of only two such wheels in the state. After the grinding wheel, knives are buffed and finishing touches are done by hand.

The cost for the process is $4 per knife, about the same that’s charged at hardware stores for knife sharpening.

“They use cheap little machines that don’t do much good,” Peterson said. “Knives don’t stay sharp long at all.”

Cattaneo uses Wusthof knives, which are German-made and have shanks that run all the way through the handles. Henckels knives are another quality German-made brand.

Gretchen Harrell, cooking school director at Orange Tree Imports on Monroe Street, said regular knife skills classes led by Wusthof instructors are the store’s most popular classes, with long waiting lists.

“Most of the students are just beginning to learn how to cook,” she said. “They’re scared of knives.”

Most also are willing to shell out about $90 for a high-quality chef’s knife.

“Cheap knives are made of steel that is not as hard as German steel,” she said. “You really can’t sharpen most of them.”

Holding the knife correctly is just as important as proper sharpening. Cattaneo holds the top of the actual blade, where it meets the handle, between his thumb and forefinger. His other three fingers curl around the handle.

“The better you do this, the more control you have,” he said. “A lot of people have learned bad knife skills, and they can be really hard to unlearn.”

The hand opposite the knife goes into “claw” position: To prevent fingers from being mangled, fingers are retracted while they hold down whatever is being cut. Cutting is done using a “piston motion,” Cattaneo added.

“Once you learn the right technique, speed will come,” he said. “In some restaurants new cooks are told to cut hundreds of pounds of onions until they get it right.”

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