Ina Garten, if I may be so bold, you will always be famous. Whether it’s for writing an impressive 13 cookbooks, reminding us that store-bought ingredients are “fine,” or making a colossal cosmopolitan for one, Ina’s influence knows no bounds. Her easy, aspirational opulence is a guiding light for denim-shirted home cooks everywhere. And this week, Garten graced us with another morsel of kitchen wisdom: her secret to storing knives.
In an Instagram post, she shared that she keeps her knives upside down in her countertop knife block. “If you put it in right side up—the usual way—as you put it in,” she says, “the blade is scraping against the wood, and I don’t think it’s good for the blade.” Storing the knives upside down, Garten says, can protect the blade, and help your knives stay sharper for longer.
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The Bon Appétit staffers had some strong feelings about Garten’s advice. We love any sneaky idea that will keep knives from getting dull, and other experts also endorse this method. But our editors have some other approaches for storage that they prefer over the knife block.
The most popular is a magnetic strip, which eliminates the possibility of dulling the knife against wood altogether. Deputy food editor Hana Asbrink has a magnetic strip mounted to a wall in her kitchen. “I want to see my knives and ensure they’re completely dry,” she says. Senior cooking editor Emma Laperruque also uses a wall-mounted magnetic knife strip. For her, it’s more efficient. “A knife block takes up counter space, which is precious for cooking,” she says. “A magnetic strip takes up wall space, which would otherwise go unused.”
For food director Chris Morocco, a magnetic knife strip, even one that fits inside a drawer, is about flexible storage. A knife block can only store certain knives—and you may not even need or want the ones that come with the block, since they’re not always the best quality, as senior commerce editor Noah Kaufman points out. “What about that deba you picked up?” Morocco asks, referring to the Japanese style of knife usually used to cut fish. “It will never fit in a standard block.”
It wasn’t all anti-knife block sentiment, though. Associate cooking and SEO editor Zoe Denenberg takes a hybrid approach, storing her less expensive, everyday knives in a countertop knife block, and keeping her more expensive, “chefy knives” sheathed in knife protectors.
If you’re one of those lucky people that has vast stretches of available counter space, and you still find yourself drawn to knife blocks, there are some good options. Some knife blocks have been redesigned to be magnetized, so you can get the best of both worlds.
Knife block, magnetic strip, or knife cover—the thing the Bon Appétit team could all agree on was that any of those methods are miles better than no storage solution at all. As Zoe put it, “Better to have your knives in a designated spot than jumbled in a drawer with the rest of your kitchen crap. That’s an accident waiting to happen.”
