Are you a household chef, cook or foodie? This post is for you.

As an owner of Cutco cutlery (I used to sell them while in college), I pretty much consider myself a knife snob. Our latest guest post author, Julia Jones from Boston, MA, offers her own insight below regarding your choice in cutlery for use in your home.

Enjoy.
– Will

Using The Right Knives For Your Cooking

At a first glance, it might look difficult to make the distinction between a quality knife and a random one. After all, you can’t tell how the quality of a knife is by looking at it, turning it around, inspecting and touching it. Instead, you need to use it for a while in order to determine whether or not it meets your needs. After all, different people have different quality standards. The more you use the respective knife, the easier it becomes to recommend it further. With all these, there are some aspects to look at in order to figure how good and durable a knife will be.

Look for a perfect assembly

A perfect assembly is a main necessity. Make sure there are no useless parts in its assembly. Instead, everything should match. Look at the bonding between the blade and the handle before anything else. It is important for these two parts to blend with no gaps. Gaps are extremely important for the overall hygiene. If these things present any irregularities, the respective gaps become excellent environments for growing bacteria. It is easy to realize that such microorganisms will infect anything you use the knife for.

Safety comes first

In knives, safety is directly proportional with ergonomics. An ergonomic handle makes the operation safe and secure. The handle must be properly created to be kept with no risks at all. It should not slip either. After all, chances are you will cook with your hands wet due to all the groceries that require cleaning upfront. An ergonomic design and a perfect weight will allow you to use the knife with no safety risks at all.

Inspect the blade responsibly

The metallic blade and the way it was manufactured will tell you a lot about the quality standards. Knives are no longer made like ten years ago. Today, there are a wide number of advanced technologies that can seriously enhance the cutting capability. Moreover, durability is not to be ignored either. The sharper a knife is, the better it will maintain its blade and cutting qualities. Moreover, you should know that a quality knife will maintain its blade in a good shape for long periods of time.

Look at the blade surface

The blade surface can be enriched with all kinds of elements, only to make the knife more efficient in cutting particular foods. Different foods require different types of blades. But if there is one thing that matches to all kinds of knives, that is the surface quality. The better polished it is, the more durable it becomes in front of oxidation.

Not sure about the brand?

The brand is not always relevant, yet some brands are world renowned for their quality standards. Choosing one of these brands will ensure that the manufacturing technologies are performed at the highest standards. There are plenty of technological procedures required to manufacture a top notch knife and each of them must be maintained by the book. All these things lead to a good final result, as well as an exquisite cooking performance.

About the Guest Post Author

Julia is an avid food enthusiast who loves everything about cooking and especially using modern tech in cooking that can make even a novice cook look like an expert chef. She occasionally shares her opinion about the latest and craziest kitchen gadgets on the Kitchen Gadgets Wars blog.

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Protect your family from scalding hot water by adjusting your hot water heater settings.

As a parent, it’s an exciting day when your child is responsible enough to bathe him or herself. Whether your kiddo prefers a bath or a shower though, some safety precautions are necessary to ensure that he or she doesn’t get scalded by too-hot water, even after they have reached the age where they can be trusted to wash behind the ears.

According to the Burn Foundation, 500,000 scalding injuries occur annually in the United States, with kids under five years-old at high risk. The good news is that by adjusting your settings, you can ensure that the water will never be scalding hot. Read on for some hot water safety tips for your hot water heater.

Hot tap water, which causes 17 percent of burn and scalding injuries, can cause a third-degree burn in just five seconds at a temperature of 140 degrees.

The easy fix?

Set your water heater temperature to no higher than 120 degrees. Most people bathe at a temperature no hotter than 100 degrees, and 110 is plenty hot enough to effectively wash dishes and laundry. In addition to keeping your kids safe, you’ll also be saving energy by making the switch to a lower temperature. If you’re not sure of your hot water settings, run your sink at the hottest setting for five minutes and place a thermometer under the stream. And if you live in an apartment and don’t have access to your water heater, talk with your landlord about adjusting the settings to a safe level.

Beyond adjusting your water heater settings, doing your due diligence as a parent can go a long way toward preventing scalding injuries. Always test the water before your child gets into the bathtub; if it’s too hot for you, it’s definitely too hot for their sensitive skin. And never leave a child younger than age five unattended in the bathtub. Avoid bathing infants in the sink, where it’s easier to accidentally turn the hot water on.

Consider installing safety devices on your faucets. These mechanisms keep your child from accidentally turning on the hot water, preventing them from receiving an accidental burn. As parents, we are very careful to make sure our kids don’t have access to any type of flame; matches, for example, or the stovetop. However, the fact is that many more burn injuries happen because of hot water than because of open flames.

About the Guest Post Author

Tim Smith writes for Modernize.com.

Sponsor this article for $1.00

Enter sponsor title and e-mail.

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By sponsoring this article, your sponsorship will display for a period of 180 days (6 months). If, for any reason, and it is up to the discretion of the authors of Windy Pinwheel, we feel content linked to or the name provided does not coincide with the objectives of this site for our audience we will issue a refund and pull the sponsorship of the article. This action does not limit you from sponsoring an article on our site again. However, by sponsoring again, we will issue the same review criteria as the prior sponsorship and if it fails, we will follow the same process as before and issue a refund and pull down the sponsorship. We truly appreciate the support of our audience and hope you can help offset our costs of operating this site by sponsoring our site articles.

For all reviews, please exercise discretion. If the sponsor of the article is in conflict of the topic of the article, we will pull down the sponsorship to remove any conflict of interest with the article at-hand. For instance, there is an article about a hamburger restaurant and a competing hamburger restaurant sponsors the article; we will pull the sponsorship and issue a refund.

By clicking the button below, I agree with the Terms & Conditions.