We've all bought great knives before and are proud of them. But as time goes by and the knives are cut one after the other, we tend to put them in the drawer as they become less and less effective. In this article, we'll show you the different springs available to keep your knife sharp without damaging the edge.
Recommendations for using kitchen knives
Before we talk about sharpening, we need to know more about the best daily practices to avoid tiring your knife too quickly. You probably don't know this, but the following practices are strongly discouraged:
- Cutting butter
- Breaking bones
- Pick up vegetables, meat and fish cut with the edge of the knife
- Put knife in dishwasher
- ...
If some of these practices seem obvious to you, others, such as butter, are a challenge. It's true that certain foods like butter, due to their very high fat content, won't help keep a knife sharp. We advise you to use a knife only for this type of food, to preserve the sharpness of others.
Different ways to sharpen your knife
Let's go into a little more detail to guide you through this essential step. You're probably familiar with age-old methods, such as rubbing two knives together to restore their sharpness. So you can do it, but you should know that this grandmotherly trick won't optimize the blade as it should be.
Other sharpening options are :
- The knife sharpener
- The rifle
- Japanese stone
Let's take a closer look at these three options. Firstly, the knife sharpener is a good solution when you don't want to spend a lot of time on this task. There are several ranges of sharpeners available, all of which have an impact on the final sharpening quality. This accessory is useful, practical, fast and easy to use. However, there are several drawbacks. With this type of product, you won't be able to respect the basic sharpening angle of your knife, which can affect its quality, and the sharpening won't be even. As a result, you'll have to go over and over again to get the right, but never perfect, edge. Finally, the big drawback of this accessory: it breaks the edge of the blade. This method is very hard on our knives and, in almost all cases, leads to rapid deterioration of the edge. If your wire breaks, you'll never again have a knife that's perfect in its precision and cutting quality.
Let's move on to the rifle. This is a good accessory for controlling sharpening, with the option of setting a sharpening angle. When using the rifle, however, you must be careful not to scratch your blade with too abrupt, uncontrolled movements. It is, however, a good alternative for sharpening your knife quickly, but it must be done with great skill.
Finally, the Japanese stone is the best sharpening method. It's the best, but it's also the most complex and time-consuming. On the other hand, it's a fascinating art that respects the knife. When this method is mastered to perfection, you'll be able to :
- Respect sharpening angle
- Catch up on this angle if it has been altered by a previous sharpening operation
- Obtain a thread identical to that of the new knife
This is a time-consuming method, since it is carried out in several stages, using stones with different grits to achieve perfection.
How often should you sharpen your knife?
While this may seem like a simple question, there really isn't a universal answer. Why is that? Quite simply, chefs use their knives far more than amateurs. So, while speed plays an essential role, the food being cut also contributes to knife wear. In order to give a figure for this frequency, we would say that for regular knife use by anyone who is not a professional, it is necessary to sharpen the blade approximately every 3 to 6 months to avoid damaging it. This mainly concerns Japanese stone sharpening. Other alternatives require more work on the blade for the same amount of use.
