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

Sharp knives need less brute force to cut than dull knives. Less brute force means less damage to the food, which you can easily see by looking closely at the cut. Delicate ingredients, like herbs, will look fresher for longer if you slice through them cleanly, whereas a dull knife will crush more of the cells surrounding the cut, which ultimately accelerates wilting and discoloration.

But more than this, a dull knife slows you down, while a sharp knife makes prep easier and more enjoyable.

A Sharp Knife Works Better

A sharp blade is predictable. When it strikes or is drawn across the food’s surface, it won’t slip. This makes it easy to control how the blade moves through the food, giving you control over your chopping or slicing. A dull blade will slip, which makes control difficult and increases the risk that it will slip into your finger. With a dull knife, it’s only a matter of time until you badly cut yourself.

A Sharp Knife is Safer

A set of <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/knife-collection">waterstones</a> for sharpening your knives will cost about as much as a good knife. We think this is a great investment since a whole set of expensive but dull knives is useless. A couple rounds at a sharpening service will cost more then a set of stones, and the stones should last you a lifetime.

Learning to Sharpen Is an Investment

When you sharpen your knives yourself, you can control the bevel of the edge to suit how you use a particular knife. For example, you may choose to put a broad 45-degree angle on the sides of a sturdy chef’s knife for a tough, durable blade that will be well suited to chopping. Or for a fine slicing knife, you can hone the edge to a shallow angle of 15 degrees on each side. Such a blade will be fragile but will slice through food with ease.

By doing your own sharpening, you can also control how finely you hone the cutting edge. If you are slicing notoriously tricky foods like very ripe tomatoes, for example, you might avoid finely polishing the edge—going only as far as a 4000 grit stone. Viewed under a microscope, such a blade will have more jagged peaks and valleys to grab hold of the slippery skin of a tomato. Basically, you are leaving your blade with a larger number of microserrations to help with the slicing and provide durability.

Learning to Sharpen Gives You More Control

It’s neither difficult nor time-consuming to sharpen a knife. Here is a quick demonstration of just how quick and easy it can be to restore a dull knife so that it’s razor sharp.

The alternative to sharpening a knife yourself is to use the sharpening services of a good knife shop. They’ll usually sharpen knives for a few dollars each. Depending on where you live, this might involve mailing your knives and waiting for them to be returned.

Sharpening Is Quick and Easy

Here are Grant’s thoughts about why he likes to sharpen his own knives

Why I Prefer to Sharpen My Own Knives

Learning how to sharpen your knives is an essential cooking skill. A sharp knife does a better job of cutting or slicing food, which is obvious enough, but it also lets you work faster and safer.

The Benefits of Sharp Knives