Ryan McKern

Build­ing on the pre­vi­ous article regard­ing kitchen cut­lery, here is part two of the series. For those of you with gold­fish mem­o­ries, the four sec­tions we're cov­er­ing are:

• Cut­lery Primer: "I see you've played knifey spooney before…"
  Or, A sharp knife cuts faster and cleaner while using less force.
• Cut­lery Primer: "These are knives! He wants me to stab him!"
  Or, A knife is dulled by use, and all knives dull in time.
• Cut­lery Primer: "… past murals depict­ing Mediter­ranean scenes, towards the rotat­ing knives."
  Or, Ser­ra­tions are not a replace­ment for a keen edge.

This being part two, we're going to touch on care, feed­ing, and sharp­en­ing of your cutlery.

A knife is dulled by use, and all knives dull in time.

But a sharp knife is dulled faster by:

• Cut­ting on inap­pro­pri­ate surfaces.
• Wash­ing it in a dishwasher.
• Fail­ing to wash or dry it off properly.
• Stor­ing it improperly.
• Sharp­en­ing it wrong.

Regard­ing inap­pro­pri­ate sur­faces, let me just come out and say it as plainly as pos­si­ble: don't cut on any sur­face that isn't plas­tic or wood. Don't cut on glass. Don't cut on mar­ble. And never, ever cut on the plate or in the pan. A usable wood cut­ting board is less than $20, and a usable plas­tic one is less than $10. I don't care how pretty your glass or stone board is, it will wreck the edge of your knife and the edge is what you're try­ing to max­i­mize the lifes­pan of. Cut­ting boards are cheap, and replace­able. Your knives prob­a­bly aren't.

Switch­ing gears slightly, let's talk about clean­ing. Dish­wash­ers are not nice to your knives. They do not get along. Peo­ple insist on run­ning nice things through dish wash­ers, com­pletely dis­re­gard­ing that a dish washer is a hot, wet, pres­sur­ized envi­ron­ment, full of abra­sives, sol­vents, and solu­tions with crazy pH bal­ances. A knife is often made of metal and wood, which are both sen­si­tive to abra­sion, sol­vents, and acidic solu­tions. Wash­ing knives in a dish washer is like smok­ing while you pump gas. You're right in think­ing that there prob­a­bly won't be an explo­sion, until there is.

Proper care means wip­ing off your blade when you're done with it, and wash­ing it as soon as pos­si­ble. Hand wash­ing a knife is easy if you have a nylon scrub­bing brush with a han­dle on it (why don't you?). You just lay the knife flat on a sta­ble sur­face, soap up the brush, and use it to lightly scrub off the blade. Rinse it, and dry it with a thick lint free towel, or heav­ily folded paper tow­els. Just like that, you've got a clean knife and no dam­age to the blade or your hand.

Of course, now that you've washed your knife, it'll have to go some­where. Loose in a drawer, a dish rack, or on a counter is not going to cut it. Knives should be stored in cov­ers (guards) or blocks. Mag­net strips on the wall are also accept­able (han­dle down!). A good knife block is made of a dried, oiled hard wood like maple or cherry. Bam­boo is pop­u­lar right now, and that's fine as long as it's well oiled. Oth­er­wise it tends to dry out, splin­ter, and crack. Stor­ing your knives safely pro­tects the edge (which, again, is why you own the knife) and your fin­gers (which helps you buy more knifes… not pay­ing a doc­tor to reat­tach your fin­gers leaves you more money for cutlery).

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As a foot note, sharp­en­ing is a point of con­tention among cooks, chefs, and pretty much any­one else with an opin­ion. I per­son­ally side with Alton Brown on this mat­ter, and say "let a pro­fes­sional sharpen your knives about once a year or as needed," but some peo­ple really like doing it them­selves. While I'd dis­cour­age this if you asked me, I will at least point to the excel­lent eGul­let forums, where a lengthy post con­tains an excel­lent guide to sharp­en­ing. It goes into intense detail about knife com­po­si­tion and con­struc­tion, as well as some of the met­al­lur­gi­cal prop­er­ties that make a knife more than just a jagged shank of metal.

And no mat­ter how des­per­ate you are, don't use some elec­tric "sharp­en­ing sys­tem" that lives on the back of a can opener. That's like beat­ing your blade with a ham­mer while grind­ing it against a gran­ite wheel.

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And thus con­cludes the down-talking and deroga­tory tone of part II, "These are knives! He wants me to stab him!" Com­ing very soon is part III, titled "… past murals depict­ing Mediter­ranean scenes, towards the rotat­ing knives."