Any kitchen is never without at least a single knife in its drawers. No kitchen can properly survive without one. But having a dull knife is just as good as nothing and is still potentially hazardous. Unknown to most, fruits high in acidity can dull blades.
When you cut lemon wedges or those oranges to make your daily OJ, some of us may be guilty of just running the knife through the tap or wiping it on a towel. The acid from the juice of the lemon or orange when retained, sort of corrodes the blade and will eventually dull the edge.
Make sure to always wash your knives properly after each use and regularly sharpen them at least every six months.
Sharpening your kitchen knives may be done through professional sharpening services or you can do them yourself. Although anyone can sharpen a knife, many commit common mistakes and end up with unfortunate short lived kitchen knives.
There are many ways you can go about sharpening a knife on your own, choose one that you’re comfortable with, so you’re assured of confidence in handling the blade and be satisfied with your work.
Before starting, check the edge for nicks, flat spots and other imperfections. This is best done under a light while eyeballing the entire length of the blade. You can remove them by sliding that section of the blade against the stone in a back and forth motion. You will know if you’ve removed the nick if it blends in with the rest of the blade’s surface. Choose the right grit of the stone as dull blades would need a grittier surface.
A grit of 600 is good for a moderately dull blade. A finer stone with a grit of 1200 is what you will need to finish sharpening your knife. While sharpening, always remember to hold your blade at a good angle to retain the correct angled edge of the blade. Chopping knives have more of a blunt edge and thinner blades are sharper and more fragile.
Use gentle strokes when sharpening to make sure you don’t drastically change the angle of the blade. Practicing your strokes on a piece of glass or ceramic can help you get into a good rhythm and feel of your knife. Hold your knife using your thumb and a finger for support and if you’re a newbie, a pair of safety gloves can ease your fear of getting cut.
Check the progress of your sharpening and try to see if you leave any scratches on the surface of the blade. If you’re doing it correctly, the scratches are evened out and none are that deep or concentrated in one area alone of the blade.
If you’re holding the knife too flat over the stone surface, you will see a concentration of scratches near the back of the blade. Each side would require between 12 to 25 strokes on the blade before you do the same on the other side.
Do not switch from one side to the other with each stroke because this lets you apply a different amount of pressure. Keep your strokes even and cover the entire length of the blade. Be aware that you do not push hard at the last moment of the stroke and lift the tip off too lightly because the tip may end up with a dull edge.
Continue sharpening until you’ve raised a metal burr. As the edge of your blade gets thinner the burr gets eliminated. This is a sign that your blade is sharp enough.
Test the sharpness of the blade by running its edge at a 45 degree angle against the side of a pen. Should it scrape the surface, it is sharp. A sharp edge will usually not reflect light. Polish your knife soon after you are satisfied with the outcome.
Knives can be dangerous to handle, but if you know how to sharpen a knife the right way and practice safety precautions, then you can be mighty proud of yourself knowing that knife sharpening is actually a mastered art.
Knife Sharpening Methods
There is nothing more irritating for a homemaker who loves to cook than working with a dull knife. It just ruins the mood somehow and your disposition for cooking that day. It is said that food tastes better when the cook is happy.
If that bears truth, you can imagine how food would taste like if the cook was seriously pissed off because he or she was stuck with dull knives in the kitchen. In fact, chefs consider knives as their major tools in their trade and invest a good amount of money on a good set of kitchen knives. They often bring their “tool kit” with them to work, too.
The Chinese basically rule with the cleaver. You might want to watch these cooks while you’re slumming it in Chinatown; it’s mostly the only thing they use. It’s heavy and can hack through bones, finely chop vegetables, and even mash a whole bulb of garlic or ginger with it.
A cleaver is actually called the Chinese chef knife and it’s more of a general purpose kitchen knife. Unlike other kitchen knives that need to be properly and regularly sharpened, a cleaver doesn’t have to be really sharp, but it definitely needs to carry some weight to it. If you sharpen a cleaver too much and use it to hack into bones and meat, it will ruin its edges and shorten its life.
As a rule, kitchen knives need to be maintained with proper knife sharpening methods to prolong their use. If you’re not a chef, it may not be as much of an importance to you to nurture love for your sharp knives.
But, it is something you’d have to do every once in a while if you cook a great deal. There are different knife sharpening methods you can use but before going head to head with them, check the blades of your knives for nicks. Nicks get in the way of cutting and can cause your knife to stray while you’re slicing and eventually hurt you.
You don’t need to throw a good knife if it has nicks, if you’re employing someone’s services to sharpen your knives, they can remove those nicks for you. There are three basic knife sharpening methods for you to choose from; sharpening with a whetstone, sharpening with steel and electric knife sharpening. All three can be done at home and with minimal skills required from you.
The easiest method to use in sharpening knives is the use of a steel rod. They are readily available in the market and often come with a purchase of a set of knives. Steel sharpening rods can do the job efficiently with just a few angled strokes. Anyone can do it and comes pretty handy whenever you feel the blade of your knife starts to dull.
To ensure everyone is safe from your super sharp knives, kitchen knives are best stored in wooden blocks or magnets. Doing so keeps the blade’s edge in good shape. Store your kitchen knives in such a way that they do not rub or bounce into one another. This dulls the edges and can cause corrosion.
On that note, a kitchen knife is an essential tool in any kitchen. If knives weren’t around we wouldn’t enjoy food the way we do now if we didn’t have knives. Food wouldn’t look as nice and we would be left just gnawing on ham bones to this day.
Knife Sharpening Equipment
Whenever you buy a set of good kitchen knives, have you ever considered buying some form of knife sharpening equipment? After all, knives eventually will dull and need sharpening. The conventional wet stone method of sharpening knives still applies to this day and many professional old school knife sharpeners continue to appreciate this method.
With the invention of cutting edge technology in fabricating top quality knives, also came the need for top notch sharpening tools. Professional knife sharpeners are artisans from a dying decade and are pretty hard to source these days since the market now offers a number of knife sharpening equipment.
Even a housewife can work these things with proper handling and instructions. Electric kitchen knife sharpeners have become part of today’s homes as many people realize how professional services can be quite expensive.
Although the crudest method only requires a wet stone, doing this may need a bit of practice from the homeowner to achieve satisfactory results without ruining a set of expensive knives. Most restaurants would rather invest on knife sharpening equipment as kitchen knives play a starring role in the efficiency of their kitchen.
Their prep cooks are constantly chopping and slicing away all sorts of textures for long hours and naturally, these take a toll on knives. Having to send knives to a professional knife sharpener may present a few unpredictable glitches along the way and compromise the kitchen in the end. Investing in electric knife sharpeners makes their life easier and allows any one kitchen staff to sharpen a knife as needed.
There are various models of knife sharpening equipment in the market suited for either home users or professionals. They can cost as reasonable as $30 up to $100. Those intended for commercial heavy duty use rack up hundreds of dollars but may not necessarily mean they give you sharper knives. It may have been designed to handle more but not better.
Before buying an electric knife sharpener, you need to understand the shape and the slope of a blade. This is what you call its bevel. A blade’s beveled edge tells you how sharp the knife is or how fine it can cut. Most chefs prefer Japanese knives because their beveled angle is tighter, meaning it's sharper and cuts better.
Consider the materials used in the grinding stone of the electric sharpener you intend to buy. The hardest of these will be diamond coated stones however any other material used will be hard enough to do its job well on steel knives.
Single stage electric knife sharpeners generally sharpen both sides of the blade with the use of interlocking grinding wheels. Just place the knife in between the vertical wheels with the sharp edge facing down and slowly pull it through. Do this a few times until the knife is sharp enough to your preference. If you would like a fancier knife sharpening equipment, you can play around with a multi-stage electric sharpener.
These are outfitted with three types of grinding stones. The first stage will use a coarse stone and is perfect for very blunt knives. The second stage has a medium surface grind stone to remove the scratches as it smoothens and sharpens the blade’s edge. The third stage has a fine surface stone or in some models it has plastic disks that will finish, buff and polish your knife with a cosmetic mirror finishing and a handsome sharp glint to its edge.
Kitchen knives can be an expensive investment on their own. Spending a few more bucks on a simple knife sharpening equipment can carry your purchase to a worthy investment. The simple design and function of a single-stage knife sharpener will come a long way for a homeowner to use as long as instructions are followed by the number.