The Secret To Keeping Sticky Foods Off Of Your Knife

There are plenty of potential pitfalls in the kitchen when whipping up a quick dinner or taking the time to craft a decadent dessert, but none are perhaps as frustrating as something as simple as food sticking to your knife. It slows you down and often makes a mess.

It turns out that there are numerous suggestions for keeping knives clean when slicing savory foods like vegetables, herbs, and potatoes. From tweaking the angle of the knife to keeping a bowl of warm water and a dish towel nearby, knives can easily be kept clean. You can also sprinkle the knife with salt or even spray it with cooking spray, as Lifehacker suggests.

However, if you're looking to bake the likes of Italian panettone or a candied fruitcake, or mix up a fruit and nut chutney, you're going to encounter the need to chop sweets. The question is how to keep that stickiness from suppressing your ability to efficiently slice, and it turns out there's a pretty simple answer.

The secret, according to novelist and food writer Stacey Ballis, is sugar (via My Recipes). Whether you are trying to dice dried fruits like raisins, or chop the likes of candied cherries or ginger, your attempts at slicing smoothly are bound to get bogged down by the stickiness from the fruit. Instead of fighting your way through the frustration, Ballis simply suggests sprinkling a small bit of sugar on the fruit beforehand to ease the effects of sticky residue on your knife.

Ballis says you can use the trick with both knives and food processor blades. She explains that the sugar on the fruit will prevent the cut pieces from adhering to each other while also creating the friction necessary for the blades to do their job.

The bottom line is that sprinkling sugar to eliminate stickiness is an easy hack to achieve a much more efficient means of accomplishing chopping, and may be the best way to get fruit slices that easily slide off your knife.