The small utility knife sliced through the cucumber like water, the cheese like melted butter and the bread like air. It’s not that I’m not used to sharp knives (my husband has a large collection and keeps them razor sharp), but this one looks nothing like his heavy-duty German cutlery with blades of steel.

This knife has a white blade and bright red handle. Almost weightless (about 3 ounces), it could be easily mistaken for a plastic or even toy knife — if it wasn’t so sharp.

It’s a ceramic knife made by Kyocera that I received from a marketing company to test. To be honest, I had never heard of a ceramic knife. I know they use ceramic in industrial products and in tiles on the space shuttle, brake pads on the Formula One cars and things way beyond the kitchen.

So I looked up ceramic knives in one of my favorite reference books, “The Science of Good Food” by David Joachim and Andrew Schloss.

It said ceramic knives are made with zirconium oxide. They are “extremely hard, sharp, lighter than steel, noncorrosive, nonreactive and hold an edge longer than most other material (sometimes months or years without sharpening or honing).”

So why isn’t everyone using these? I called around to a few stores.

Dillard’s didn’t have any. Bed Bath and Beyond had one ceramic knife, but staffers didn’t know much about it since they just got it in a few months ago. The owner of Pryde’s Old Westport told me they are great knives, but the store didn’t have any in stock. Williams Sonoma had a few, and only those by Kyocera. I talked with chef Ralph Fillipelli with Luna’s. He doesn’t use them and never has.

“It’s an incredible material (in the knives),” says Katie Shaw with Kyocera Advanced Ceramics, who is on a mission to get the word out about ceramics. “There’s just not a whole lot of it available. And there’s only a few places in the world to get it.”

The key ingredient to a ceramic knife is zirconia (think cubic zirconia), which is mainly found in Australia. The USA produces only about 8 percent of the world’s total. But more important, Ms. Shaw says, is what you do with it after you get it. It’s the process that makes it ceramic.

“To get it to a material you can use at home is a 12-step process,” she says. “I compare it to a fine cigar that goes through a dozen hands before you get to the final results.”

Although Kyocera is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and the company started working on kitchen products about 25 years ago, only recently has the ceramic advantage been catching on, she says. In this month’s Food and Wine, a Kyocera knife was listed as one of the top five Japanese knives out of the 100 tested.

One of the misconceptions about ceramic knives is that they are brittle and break easily. That may be true for some of the inferior ceramic products coming out of China, she says. But for high-quality ceramic knives, it takes sudden or extreme pressure. For the most part, they will hold up as well as most metal knives.

“Metal does snap, too,” she says. “And if you have had a knife for more than seven years, it will have chips.”

You shouldn’t use ceramic knives on any kind of frozen food or anything with bone. But for most anything else, ceramic has many advantages. It’s rust proof and chemically inert, so it will never absorb acid, oil or salt. Not only is it sharper than steel, but it will hold the edge 10 times longer. And one of the surprising advantages is that it leaves fruits and vegetables clean. If you slice an apple or cut some lettuce, they will not turn brown because there is no transfer of metal ions. Eventually, through oxidation, they will, but not as quickly as with a metal knife.

Price can be a factor. Quality ceramic knives are not cheap. Kyocera’s 3-inch paring knife retails at around $30. The top-of-the line Kyotop Damascus chef’s knife will set you back around $300. And they must be professionally sharpened with a diamond wheel (with daily use, about once a year).

Finally, it’s not a knife for children. They are very sharp. But that’s also the ceramic advantage, Ms. Shaw says.

“It’s such a joy to always be able to reach for a sharp knife.”

For more information or to purchase Kyocera knives, visit www.KyoceraAdvancedCeramics.com or call (800) 537-0294.

Lifestyles reporter Sylvia Anderson may be reached at sylviaanderson@npgco.com.