Knife Sharpening Class

Grant Crilly is the Executive Director and cofounder of ChefSteps. Grant is a classically trained chef and, prior to ChefSteps, he worked on the award-winning cookbook series Modernist Cuisine and cooked at various restaurants, including L’Astrance in Paris, Busaba in Mumbai, and Mistral Kitchen in Seattle.

Grant Crilly

Most chefs need only two or three knives to accomplish all the jobs they do in a kitchen.

A chef’s knife (European-style) or gyutou (Japanese-style) is a workhorse. This is the knife you’ll use the most to chop, dice, peel, and smash, and it can handle many slicing tasks. If you can have only one knife, this is the one to have.

A paring knife is the second blade to have. These are for getting into hard-to-reach places and making quick work of any scraping or fine cutting. For some reason, these knives seem to get lost easily, so we recommend getting an inexpensive one.

A slicing knife (European-style) or a sujihiki or yanagi (Japanese-style) is the knife to have for carving meat or filleting fish. The thin blade is designed to easily slip past both raw and cooked meats and seafood with almost no effort. Its length allows for one long continuous stroke for clean cuts.

Some chefs also like to have a long, serrated knife—like a bread knife—while others don’t.

Essential Knives

If you are going to purchase a high-quality knife, the following are important factors to consider: comfort, balance, blade shape, and blade material.

Comfort really is the most important factor. For example, if you have large hands, then a bigger handle is going to feel better in your hand, but make sure that the large handle and blade shape don’t cause your knuckles to strike the cutting board on the downward stroke.

The knife should be well balanced. Not only does this make the knife nimbler, but also, if you use the knife for hours on end, you’ll discover how much less fatigue your hand develops than when you use a clunky knife.

The metal the blade is constructed from is the final consideration. High-carbon steel takes on a very sharp edge (because of its resistance to developing carbides on the cutting edge), but this is a brittle steel, prone to chipping and rusting. It requires a lot of care. Stainless steel, on the other hand, is more durable but won’t hone to as sharp an edge as other steel alloys. A reputable knife shop should be willing to discuss the pros and cons of the myriad blade materials used in high-quality knives.

What Money Will Buy

Cutting boards are important. We prefer <a href="http://amzn.to/RFnMNi">wood cutting boards</a> for their natural antimicrobial properties, resistance to absorbing food odors, and the way they feel under the blade of a knife. Wood cutting boards are more expensive than plastic, and they require slightly more care to avoid warping.

<a href="http://amzn.to/XgoW4i">Plastic cutting boards</a> are less expensive and will hold up to more abuse. But they require vigilance when it comes to cleaning, because bacteria can lurk in the nicks and cuts the surface will develop over time. Softer plastics are also prone to absorbing odors from food, which can be difficult to eliminate.

Get a Good Cutting Board

There is a lot of confusion about what an <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/knives">expensive, high-quality knife</a> does for you in the kitchen. Keep in mind that all knives are sharp when new. And all blades can be made sharp; it’s just that some blades will dull faster than others. Sharpness is mostly a matter of how well the blade was honed on a whetstone. The ability of a knife to hold a keen edge, however, is mostly a function of the metal used to make the blade, the angle of the bevel, and how the blade has been used (or abused). In the end, we will always choose a sharp knife over a dull knife, regardless of which one is more expensive. While expensive knives might stay sharp longer and feel more nicely balanced in your hand, the real key to having a sharp knife is to sharpen it when needed. To prove the point, we purchased an inexpensive used knife and then sharpened it. We were surprised at just how well it performed against some of our most expensive knives—at least until it quickly lost its edge.

Do You Need an Expensive Knife?