In the past couple of months I have been experimenting a lot with new dishes, using ‘new’ ingredients and I have become more aware of when my knife is not as sharp as it should be. I used to manage and put more pressure on my knife to cut vegetables or meat not knowing that it didn’t have to be that way, until a friend mentioned that she sharpens her knife before each cooking session. “Oh wow” I thought, “maybe I should do that too” 🙂 I already owned a honing steel and whetstone, I just didn’t (know how to) use it.
How do you know when your knife is dull? Watch this video to find out how you can test your knife.
Sharpness test
So now that you know that your knife needs some fine tuning, what do you do? There are two techniques: Honing and Sharpening. Important is both cases is the 20 degree angle…
Honing is actually the first one recommended and can be done almost daily. Sharpening takes making your knife sharper a step further and is done with a whetstone or should be done by professional sharpeners (like a butcher).
As you use your knife, the blade will (almost invisibly) start to bend and honing it will bring the edge back into alignment.That’s when your honing steel comes out and is put to work. The video below shows the proper technique for honing your knife.
Honing a knife
Now, when you’ve honed and honed, but the knife is still dull, you know you have to do some ‘real’ sharpening. More choices, because you can either do it yourself with a whetstone or have a professional sharpen your knife. Personally I like to do it myself because I can quickly sharpen my knife while I’m in food prep mode, but because I’m not a professional, I have to do it more often than for example a butcher would do it. Professionally it can be done once or twice a year, while you can do it more often with your own stone. So know can you sharpen your knives properly? Here’s another video showing you how.
Stoning a knife
Researching the topic and watching these videos helped me understand how I can take better care of my knives and be happy cutting my veggies with a sharp one. I also understand now, why my Mom used to get mad when her knives were dull and Dad had to take out the whetstone 🙂
Knife sharpening tools you can get on Amazon