Opinel Le Petit Chef Knife & Finger Guard Set (001744)

The Opinel Le Petit Chef Knife & Finger Guard Set introduces your children to food prep and cooking. The home kitchen can be a dangerous place, and many parents do not let their kids in the kitchen during food prep to prevent injury. However, the better approach is probably to introduce kids to the dangers in a controlled way and let them learn the skills required to use dangerous things safely and confidently. In the kitchen, your children will learn much more than mere safety. They will learn dexterity, artistry, creativity, hard work, and self-reliance and they will live much richer lives than the children of the DoorDash crowd.

Le Petit Chef is not one of those foolproof devices that are so safe that they cannot be used for their intended task. The knife in this set is a legit knife that is sharp and cuts. However, the knife is designed in such a way as to mitigate the risks as much as possible while still letting the knife cut like a knife. The edge is sharp because using a dull knife is actually more dangerous than using a sharp knife. The tip is rounded to prevent accidental pokes while your kids are still learning blade safety. There is a ring between the handle and blade for your child's forefinger to prevent him from losing grip during use.

Because the knife is sharp and will cut your children's fingers if misused, there is a red plastic finger guard between your children's fingers and the food being cut. Holding the food being cut is probably the most dangerous part of food prep. To minimize the risks, your child uses the finger guard with one hand to hold the food down against the cutting board while cutting with the other hand. Later on, when he learns to curl his fingertips under to prevent them from being cut, he can eliminate the finger guard and use the knife only.

Le Petit Chef Knife has a 10cm stainless steel blade and varnished beechwood handle. The knife is 21cm long and sized for a child's hand. The handle is rectangular in cross section rather than oval so that your children learn to index the blade direction and edge more quickly than they might with a rounded handle. The blade edge sits much lower than the handle to keep your child's fingers off the cutting board and food during use, something that is lacking when children use small adult knives like paring knives rather than a proper knife sized for them. The styling is designed to appeal to a child's eyes and perspective. The design is excellent and has been voted best young kid's chef knife by America's Test Kitchen repeatedly.

A natural partner for the Le Petit Chef Knife & Finger Guard Set is the Opinel Le Petit Chef Apron.

An excellent choice of cutting board for the Le Petit Chef is the GSI Outdoors RAKAU Cutting Board Small, which is made of bamboo and measures about 10.5" x 6.5". The RAKAU is large enough to use, but small enough that it can store inside a drawer together with your children's knife, finger guard, and apron.

Keep your Le Petit Chef Knife in top working condition with Opinel Maintenance Oil. Maintenance Oil will protect the steel against corrosion and penetrate the beechwood handles and prevent them from cracking when dry and rotting when wet. 

Keep all of your cutlery (even children's knives) nice and sharp. Not only will your blades be more effective when they are sharp, they will actually be safer to use because they will cut with less pressure than a dull blade and behave much more predictably.

There is no single or "best" way to sharpen cutlery, because we all have our different preferences and skill levels. Different sharpening methods will also suit different blade shapes and sizes, and you probably would not use the same sharpening tool on a pocketknife and sword. To make the matter even less universal, some prefer to sharpen at home while others sharpen in the field, so the "best" sharpening tools will necessarily differ. Excellent ways to sharpen include:

• Edge Pro Sharpening System
• Hults Bruk Grinding Stone
• Opinel Manual Knife Sharpener
• Opinel Small Natural Sharpening Whetstone from Lombardia

Opinel Part Number -  001744
Universal Product Code -  3123840017445