>People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives...
What amazes me is how many people spend absolutely zero time sharpening knives, using decades-old knives that have never been sharpened and can't even cut through cucumbers.
Such people should perhaps consider a ceramic-bladed knife. They stay sharp basically forever because the blade is extremely hard, with the downside that it's not repairable with ordinary equipment if chipped. But if the owner would never maintain their metal knife anyway, then it's not _really_ a downside.
On hard material and when overloaded, they will chip in large, unfixable chunks.
On softer material, they continuously sharpen their edges at a microscopic scale, fracturing away tiny chips as they're worn, to new glassy ceramic molecular edges. A well used ceramic blade becomes micro-serrated.
This sounds fantastic until you think about what is happening to the shards of hard glassy ceramic which briefly become part of your food before becoming part of your gastrointestinal tract.
How much mineral and metal grit does one consume on a regular basis? The ceramic material from a ceramic knife blade is, obviously from just looking at it, very small. I bet the amount of grit I've eaten from having a taste for raw oysters vastly outweighs what I'd get from a lifetime of using ceramic knives.
People can work up to eating fairly large shards of glass. Eating tiny bits of ceramic occasionally are unlikely to be an actual issue any more than ingesting a little bit of sand.
Glass eating is a real thing with a surprising number of documented cases. In some cases it’s classified as Hyalophagia a form of Pica where people focus on glass, but it doesn’t necessarily have significant negative side effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder)
There’s also a magic trick where people eat sugar that’s very clear and looks like glass, but that’s a different thing.
No, I’m saying some mentally ill people consume vast quantities of glass and medical professionals are only concerned with the most extreme cases. It’s like saying the forces involved in a boxing match are a useful benchmark for brain trauma, on that scale a 6 month old infant punching you is so far below that benchmark you don’t need to worry about it.
Which means if you’re worried about consuming 1/100,000th as much it’s clearly not a big deal.
If your body didn't have ways to deal with sharp things you eat, we'd never eat fish due to the risk of pin bones. Microscopic shards of ceramic pose very little risk.
I used to be a fan, and used them heavily for years. They stay sharp... for a while, and then there's no practical way to re-sharpen them. You get a couple good years out of them and then a lot of mediocre to bad years.
Running a steel knife through an electric sharpener once a month (a 2-minute operation) keeps it feeling consistently like new.
It's cheaper than an electric sharpener and doesn't carry the risk of taking off too much material from a blade due to overenthusiastic use.
I am 100% certain that there are multiple people on this thread that could tell me I'm getting less optimal results than their tools and/or method. I don't care. I'm getting results that work when I cook. I don't trust myself to get the angle right with a diamond stone.
Pull through sharpening creates an edge that does not last. This channel has great explanations about this and what to do instead: https://youtu.be/pagPuiuA9cY
That is an amazing video. I can confirm that the methods are correct, he mentions exactly what I've been doing for years, explains and demonstrates very clearly.
I have one, I use it on my knives every 1-2 months. My knives will last decades rather than "lifetime" but I don't care... they're always sharp and I don't have to work at it. I can buy new knives.
People worry that they will ruin their knives in an attempt to sharpen them. They don't know that they always have the backstop of going to a competent kitchen store and having them sharpened there. I worry about ruining knives with a cheap sharpener I got at IKEA. So I don't buy super expensive knives. I buy commercial grade knives from Dexter and Mercer. I sharpen them to the best of my ability. The results are no doubt inferior to an expert sharpening them, but they're far better than no sharpening or settling for serrated knives.
Keeping knives sharp is just obscure enough of a skill to elude most home cooks. Videos that tell you to judge the angle for sharpening a knife unaided don't help.
I am by no means an expert at sharpening knives but I can get my knives to razor sharp edges on a 20 dollar whetstone and an old pair of jeans glued onto a piece of plywood with some polishing compound on it as a strop. really isn't rocket science to do it right and it would take decades of daily sharpening(no one does this outside of chefs maybe) to make any kind of noticeable dent in the metal. if you can push it through paper(not just slice it) it's more than sharp enough and even a slicing cut on paper is fine.
Why there isn’t a bigger business selling diamond stones for the kitchen is a mystery to me. Everyone has a honing steel but that won’t grind a new edge like a proper stone.
I think because people rarely even know what a sharp knife is. Once upon a time being able to sharpen a knife was a mandatory skill in life. Right now unless you are woodworker, leatherworker, hairdresser or professional cook - you rarely know what really sharp means. So you can't compare and demand better.
And with families getting smaller and takeout more popular - the prep work in the kitchen has reduced substantially.
You can sharpen (really, burnish) steel knives on a stainless steel sink edge! Stainless steel kitchen sinks are very common in USA.
Gently press the knife blade almost flat against the sink edge and pull the knife handle toward you while moving it to the right (or to the left if you're left-handed). Hold the knife at the angle desired for the blade edge (endless discussions of angle are possible). Of course don't cut yourself.
The motion is similar to that when using a sharpening steel.
Do several times on both sides. Wash and wipe the blade clean. Voila!
A co-worker taught me this trick after I asked how she kept her knife so sharp. I haven't bought or used a knife sharpener since.
That will knock the burs straight but won't really sharpen the knife (much like a honing rod). After a single use or two your knife will be just as dull as before you knocked the burs straight.
I know I'm setting myself up for being picked up, but... I use an older knife that I've never sharpened outside of "occasionally" running it back and forth against a tough fabric. It cuts literally everything just fine; cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. Nothing about my use of it _seems_ unsafe; but I expect that's partially because I don't cut very fast. Cooking, when I'm involved, tends to be "social time", where we prep and chat at the same time; so there's no rush.
I'm not saying it's not a good idea to sharpen knives, but a lot of people make it sound like you're a dangerous monster if you don't. And that just doesn't seem to be the case.
My parents are the same and honestly the sharpness is fine for how they use their knives. I don’t know for yours but theirs don’t cut just fine at all. They barely cut. It’s ok if you actually have to think and push through each cuts but a complete no go for any serious cutting.
It’s a huge waste of time because it prevents any kind of fast work but they don’t know how to safely work with a knife anyway so they don’t notice. My father immediately cut himself the only time I actually sharpened so I stopped trying.
Anyway an ultrasonic knife seems like a cool idea. The technology is common in industrial setting for cutting. I think it’s cool to bring it to a kitchen knife even if it always remains a gimmick.
> outside of "occasionally" running it back and forth against a tough fabric.
As I understand it, that's technically stropping, not sharpening, but it should be sufficient to keep an already-sharp blade sharp over the long term as long as the blade doesn't see extremely heavy use.
That said, most people don't strip their blades any more than they sharpen them.
I’ve seen people use knives on glass cutting boards and granite countertops (directly). They quickly became… not knives? Pieces of pointed sheet metal?
I don’t know, what do you call a previously perfectly fine knife which now is unable to perform any knife like action?
For some reason my daughters love to use my decent knives to cut food on top of ceramic plates and they frequently get tomato crushing dull. I bought an overpriced sharpener that had excellent reviews (from actual knife sharpeners not just Amazon customer reviews) that I think may be a counterfeit from Amazon. I think I just need to learn to sharpen well with stones and hide my knives better.
A dull knife can still cut. I’ve run across ones so dull they couldn’t cut clear tape on packages. Literally just grabs the tape and it rips off . Like I used my finger.
We moved house recently and I bought some new knives for the kitchen. My wife is now constantly cutting herself because she has no intuition for how sharp a knife should be. I can’t really imagine what the safety argument is against dull knives.
People say this a lot but the dull knives I have won’t cut my hands around the force required to cut, say, veg. My sharp knife will cut my hand at extremely low levels of force. Also the direction the dull knives can slip is usually along the surface of what I’m cutting which would almost always be away from my hand.
The knives I consider dull will absolutely cut me if I do something dumb, and I'm much less likely to do something dumb when the blade goes straight through what I'm cutting without having to use any force.
I guess it also depends how and what you're cutting. I sure wouldn't try to julienne carrots with a knife that doesn't easily slice through the carrot.
When a large force is applied unintentionally to a finger we have the problem.
With a dull knife you need to apply a larger force than with a sharp knife.
[The video illustrates this with breaking the skin of the tomato.]
For a normal cut this is not a problem.
But - if the knife slips and a large force is applied at the same time - then you will get a large cut.
If the knife slips and a small force is applied, you will get a smaller cut.
If the probability of slipping is the same for sharp and dull knifes,
then due to the forces applied, the cuts you get with a sharp knife are less dangerous.
Have you never used a knife like this? I’ve got one that’s been used by people on plates enough that it’s dull - I can press it into my fingers and pull back and forth and it won’t cut me with pretty reasonable pressure. With more pressure if it’s a glancing thing it’ll not take off a knuckle. I’ve just used it so that I could say this but chopping up a cucumber is totally fine and easy. I can’t cut like I can with my actually sharp knife but it’ll cut stuff.
A dull knife you cannot control, is slides across the surface, it can slip. Try cutting onions with a dull knife. You will cry yourself out of the room.
Sorry for the slow reply; it's noticeable in practice. I'm pretty sensitive, and it's usually a good indication that it's time to sharpen knives when I start crying a lot. Sharpening generally improves my onion-cutting experience, unless it's a particularly pungent bag of onions.
I don't use knives in my kitchen. My romantic partner does. Yesterday I decided to cut some tomatoes only to find out that all knives are dull.
She never said anything, I didn't know it. Why?
Because she is just "used" to it and to her these knives were just fine. So she never thought about sharpening knives in the first place.
I will take those knives to a pro and he will sharpen them for me, as in a rental I stay in, I don't have the tools to do that and as I said in another comment - I don't have a pain free process to do that as I don't do it often.
You don't really need "tools" to sharpen knives. You just need a harder surface and some experience. It's one of those things that once you learn you can accomplish with a variety of "tools" because you're just trying to achieve an end goal. There's zero reason you can't sharpen a knife in a rental, lol. You don't need a belt grinder or anything.
People get way too caught up in buying into systems and being told how to do things because it alleviates some anxiety of trying something new. Sharpening knives hasn't really changed much in the last few centuries. Watch a few guides and learn to do it. There's no substitute for experience here. It's also a very transferable skill so it's one that used to be taught in schools but no longer is.
When I was in school (in seventies), all boys at least tried to learn how to use and take care of all sharp tools and machines with one up to wood and metal lathe. When I was in school now as a teacher, scissors were the only somewhat sharp things kids were allowed to use. Risk tolerance is so low in our society nowadays, sense of responsibility of children is nonexistent etc.
A semester of machine shop taught me an immense amount, and based on my experience with a lot of techies, 95% more about how the world (and tools) work than 95% of the population.
when I was poor I used to make pricy shaving blades last for months longer than they should have by rubbing them on some old jeans. I don’t remember where I learned it but my roommates thought I was crazy til they tried it.
If she's not used to sharp knives you're not doing her a favour by getting them crazy sharp.
Just get a cheap knife sharpener (not a whetstone) with good reviews and sharpen them a bit once every few weeks, it takes a minute, gets good results, and you can work with her on how sharp they should be.
Most of the time knives that are too sharp are much more dangerous than knives that are too blunt. The people worrying about your knife slipping into your finger have never actually used a knife imo. If it's dull enough to be slipping you'll get a welt before you get cut.
> Most of the time knives that are too sharp are much more dangerous than knives that are too blunt.
With a sharp knife, you cut through food very easily so you use very little force. You also use techniques that prevent you from getting hurt, such as the claw ( https://www.thekitchn.com/knife-skills-the-claw-75998 ).
But if someone has used a dull knife for most of their life, they may not have cultivated these skills and may hold their knife in an unsafe way and or use a lot of force when cutting.
For someone like that, a sharp knife could be a lot more dangerous, but if they're trained/using it properly, a sharp knife is a lot more safe as it reduces effort and chance of the knife slipping.
My thought process was that anyone who is trained or interested would seek to get them sharpened.
I've been in this position and my partner at the time decided to use a separate set of knives from me, as my sharp knives made her focus on the danger and pulled her out of her zoned out cooking-with-a-glass-of-wine mood.
Fair enough, how she approaches tools isn't my decision.
Respectfully, proper technique is just a matter of searching and reading for 2-3 minutes followed by a bit of practice and repetition to get fast. You can skip the getting fast part if you want. Nobody needs "training" to become proficient with a kitchen knife.
She doesn't care. It's not possible to force someone to be a gear nerd.
She cooks, she enjoys it, she does it with a medium sharp knife that doesn't slip because that's not a real thing, and isn't scaring her because it's just medium sharp.
How do you not use knives? Do you use some other cutting instrument, that has the same problem as knives (cutting edge needs sharpening at times), do you only purchase pre-sliced food, do you only order take out, or only eat food that never needs cutting, or do you eat food that many or most people would cut in some way (oranges, apples, celery, etc.) by refusing to cut but using your teeth to separate out parts.
Do you not use butter knives or have you removed those from the category knives as their purpose is not really cutting (although I use butter knives to cut cherry tomatoes and garlic as they have no problem with that task)
I'm not trying to harass here, I am just incredibly interested by this statement as I don't think I've ever seen a kitchen without knives (excepting apartments that did not have any residents at the time)
As the parter who does most of the cooking, I'd be pretty annoyed if my parter took it upon themselves to get all my knives sharpened (unless they asked me first and I enthusiastically agreed).
>> I will take those knives to a pro and he will sharpen them for me, as in a rental I stay in, I don't have the tools to do that and as I said in another comment - I don't have a pain free process to do that as I don't do it often
Do you also replace your elderly relatives' Windows XP with linux distros, because linux is a better OS?
The moment you return the sharpened knives to your partner and she starts using them, she'll cut herself, with a small probability for a serious cut that will leave permanent damage to her hand.
DMT Diamond Sharpeners are fun, especially the ones where you have a milled steel plate that's very flat to which the diamond abrasive is fixed via some nickelplating process. Use one thats "extracoarse" on one side and "fine" (600grit) on the other plus another onsided one with extra fine. Finish with japanese whetstone (synthetic one) and or polishing pashe on a strap of leather. Takes almost no space, can be done at the kitchen table. The equipment costs some, so its probably mostly worth it if you like doing it - sharpening has a meditative quality (wear theowaway gloves)
Yes. These are awesome. They have ones that fold up inside an attached plastic cover (like leatherman) that are great for apartment living, and will sharpen pretty much anything, from filet and paring knives to axes.
This is all very defeatist. Learn to sharpen your knives for your own sake and your... romantic partner. It's a very basic life skill that you should know.
I've never seen a knife like that where I live, in California. The only small serrated knifes people here have are stake knives and on rare occasions sausage knives.
It's strange how two relatively similar cultures can have such oddball differences.
This is while living in California's Central Valley, where a third of the world's tomatoes are grown, so it's not like tomatoes aren't a major part of the culture here.
I wonder if it's because most of California's settlement was within the last 200 years, with modern metallurgy making it common for knifes to hold their edge long enough to easily cut tomatoes with only occasional sharpening, negating the need for a special knife just for tomatoes.
Nationwide advertisements for knives show people using straight-bladed knives for cutting cucumbers and tomatoes, despite stated stake knives being extremely common, so tomato knives are likely rare throughout the country, not that much of the country is any older than California.
You can't sharpen a serrated knife, though. When it becomes irritating to cut tomatoes with my straight knife, I know it's time to sharpen it—that's how I avoid getting used to a dull knife.
It’s kind of tedious, but you can do it with a tool like the DMT Diafold Serrated Knife Sharpener. On most serrated knives, you will also want to lightly sharped/deburr the other face at an extremely shallow angle using a whetstone that either you don’t care about too much or that is extremely resistant to scratching (e.g. a DMT-style flat stone). If you do that part on something like a traditional Japanese stone, you will make a mess.
I've tried sharpening knives a few times in my life and I've never been able to tell the difference. I agree with the principle, but in practice I simply haven't witnessed it matter.
I've had the same experience with the pull through sharpeners, but I bought a cheap 2-sided Japanese waterstone and learned to use it (not very well) and the difference it makes is very noticeable despite my lack of skill. It does however take me maybe 15 minutes to sharpen a knife.
most people don't even know how to properly hone a knife since there are specific movements.
i would recommend anyone sending their knives to a professional for sharpening -- you will feel much more confident cutting, and everything will be safer.
It's not really that hard to learn how to hone a knife. There's different techniques that work and I'd think anyone who loves to cook regularly hones their knives anyway.
Now, sharpening is a bit of a different story but also totally achievable with a little investment (money for some stone(s) and time for practice). But you're right, if you cannot be bothered to do that yourself, it's definitely better to have your knives sharpened professionally than to use dull knives in the kitchen.
Yes, and like all other skills that take practice, most people are miserable at it. If you honestly think the opposite, I think maybe we live on different planets.
This isn’t how it works. Duller blades are more dangerous because when you cut with a dull blade you have to push harder and then that blade can do things you’re not anticipating.
Have you spent any serious time in the kitchen? Sharp blades are incredibly important for… cutting.
I agree, but this is more about stopping when you get hurt. I cook everyday and hurt myself only with very sharp knifes as I couldn't feel when the knife was about to cut my skin.
For trained chefs, the sharper blade means things stay in place as expected, because the weight and motion of the blade are cutting, and not force exerted.
Related: I watch chefs use a mandolin, no freaking way I'd use it the way they do. I just do not have the skills necessary to free hand it. I will use a safety glove and/or a guard.
