Overcoming The Dull Knife Blues
Prepping food with a dull knife will give you the blues about cooking. It's that feeling you get when you're cutting ripe fruit and vegetables and your knife isn't doing as much slicing and dicing as it is beating the food into little pieces with blunt force trauma.
Plus, a dull knife is way more likely to send you to the ER for a couple stitches. Thank you, slippage caused by dullness.
If any of that sounds like your regular kitchen routine or emergency, as the case may be, know that you don't have to live this way. It's time to understand the why of the problem and explore your options.
Why Blades Go Dull
The thinness of your knife is what makes it sharp. This thinness is also what causes the blade to go dull.
After each use, the edge rolls and deforms a little to one side or the other. Overtime and after repeated uses, there's not much of the sharp edge that remains exposed. At that point, little of the knife's original edge is actually coming into contact with what you're trying to cut.
Sharpening
Sharpening a knife involves removing metal from the dull edge of the blade, and what you're left with is a fresh knife-edge that is free of deformities and razor sharp.
You can sharpen knives yourself, at home, and there are many kits available at retailers to do just that. If the included instructions are inadequate, you can always YouTube how to sharpen a knife. You'll just wanna make sure that they're using the same sharpening gear that you have.
How much you use the knife will determine how often it needs to be sharpened. A good rule of thumb for your home kitchen is to plan on having the edge sharpened at least 1 or 2 times a year.
Professional Sharpening
There are many professional knife sharpening services available. These are great because they do all the work for you and you always get back a knife that is supremely sharp.
You can bet that any knife that is professionally sharpened will pass all the tests for knife sharpness that you can throw at it, such as being able to easily cut paper or the ability to shave the hairs off your arm with the blade.
Staying Sharp
Honing is the routine maintenance of knife care. When you run the honing rod up and down the knife blade before every use, you help to bend back into straightness any of the knife's edge that may have curled over with the previous use. Doing this won't keep the knife from ever needing to be sharpened but it will greatly extend the edge life.
Still, plan on routine sharpening. How much you use the knife will determine how often it needs to be sharpened. A good rule of thumb for your home kitchen is to have the edge sharpened at least 1 or 2 times a year. Look into mail-in cutlery knife sharpening for more information.
