Fucking Sharp Knives
Edge porn. If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.
Have you ever watched Gordon Ramsay mince an onion into perfect 2 mm cubes in 3 seconds flat? Or seed and dice a tomato so cleanly the tomato didn’t even see it coming? One minute it’s just sitting there and the next it’s laying in a million pieces like, “What the fuck just happened???”
You can’t do that shit without fucking sharp knives.
I admit, I went for years without knowing what was wrong with my chopping game. I tried to cut tomatoes and ended up with mush. Weak, confused, I bought a serrated “tomato knife”. I was in a dark place.
I finally got myself straight, though. I dropped a few hundy on a set of Japanese knives, a knife block for storage, and some Japanese water stones to keep them sharp.
And then had to ban the rest of my family from using them. It was that or get rid of them. My family, I mean. The knives were there to stay.
My advice to you is simple:
Get good steel
Don’t fuck it up
Keep it sharp
Note the clean, uncrushed edges of the parsley. That means the knife is sharp. If you cut with a dull knife the cut edges will be dark green as the knife edge crushes more cell walls. Does this matter? Probably not for taste, but for pride? Most certainly.
Get Good Steel:
Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. As the carbon content rises, the steel becomes harder and stronger, but also more brittle. Other elements are added to steel for durability, corrosion resistance, and edge retention: chromium, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, silicon, vanadium. A good knife balances durability and edge retention with the ability to take a fine edge.
Most German knife manufacturers use X50CrMoV15 steel in their high-quality knives. It offers great corrosion resistance, great wear resistance and decent edge retention. This was my starter knife set, and it was pretty hard to fuck up. The main drawback is that, because it’s so hard, it’s also harder to sharpen to a razor fine edge.
When I got a little more serious about my knife game I stepped up to those Japanese knives I mentioned. They have a VGMAX core (very high in carbon making them very, very hard) which is clad in layers of softer, less brittle, corrosion resistant steel. This process is called “kasumi” and is a traditional way of making samurai swords, in theory giving the blade the best properties of both steels: an extremely sharp edge, but more ductile and and easier to sharpen.
All good to know, but frankly, they had me at “Samurai sword”.
Whatever you have in your knife block, know what you’ve got. Pay attention to how it holds its edge, try not to fuck it up too much, and figure out how to keep it sharp.
Don’t Fuck it Up:
There are two ways you can fuck up your knife big-time: storing it wrong, and cutting on a bad surface.
Don’t throw all your knives in a drawer and let them clatter around and expect anything from them besides chipped edges and heartbreak. They do make drawer inserts for knives, and those are a good solution - especially if you have little ones (‘cause drawers lock). Another good solution when kids are around is an under-cabinet block. Out of reach, out of sight, and handy. Other blocks sit on your counter, and either have slots for your knives, or magnets that hold them to a surface. Wall-mounted magnetic strips are probably the slickest option. But whatever method you use, you still need to pay attention to the edges as the knives move into or onto their storage place. Don’t be an asshole to your knives.
Let’s talk cutting boards.
End-grain cutting boards are usually cited as the easiest on a knife’s edge, because the knife edge can push aside the wood fibers rather than being forced across them. And if we lived in the French countryside and were chopping our herbs on the cross-section of an oak tree we inherited from our grandmother, that would be great. But the end-grain boards available to us today are made from multiple pieces of wood glued together, so your knife is also pressing into epoxy.
When you look at a steel knife edge using electron microscopy after cutting on different surfaces, edge-grain (flat-grain) boards do as well as end-grain boards, if not slightly better. Those thin, incredibly convenient cutting mats you can toss in the dishwasher? A hard En-Oh NO. (I still own them, as well as a drawer full of knives I don’t give a shit about. I let my family use that garbage while I use my good knives on a high-soft board.)
Unsurprisingly, the Japanese have all the answers in terms of cutting surfaces. First, hinoki wood boards. Hinoki is a soft cypress wood, antibacterial and easy on knife edges. If your sushi chef doesn’t have a hinoki board, chances are he is using a high-soft board. I have no fucking idea why it’s called that, but I do know that it is made of a polypropylene elastomer - essentially synthetic rubber. Non-porous in addition to antibacterial and very easy on your knives. These boards aren’t cheap, but neither are good knives, and neither is all that time you would otherwise spend sharpening and cursing.
Someone in my household recently used one of my good knives to cut tomatoes on a fucking marble pastry board. I will withhold her identity to protect her from shame, trolling, and possible retribution, but I will say that her name rhymes with “Annika”.
It was a teaching moment.
My advice for you: don’t fucking do that.
Keep it Sharp:
Want to know if your knife is still sharp? Inspect the edge near a window or under a light and try to reflect light off of the edge. If you can, it’s dull. After sharpening, the edge of the knife becomes invisible.
One point of order: that steel rod that came with your knife set is a honing rod. As you use your knife, the edge can bend ever so slightly, You run each side of your knife edge along it to coax the edge back into line. Not only does it make your knife cut more effectively, but it helps prevent injury to the edge. Sort of like stretching before you work out. Sort of.
Hone often so you can sharpen less.
Sharpening is always done with some form of abrasive material that is harder than steel. Sharpening refines and renews the steel by grinding away a tiny bit of material. Sort of like Crossfit. Sort of?
You either need to sharpen your own knives or take them to someone who can sharpen them. If you choose the latter, then you are without your favorite knife for a while. I like my knives better than I like a lot of people, and I don’t like being apart from them.
I spent a year and a half or so trying to master my Japanese water stones. I watched countless videos and sat on my living room floor for a weekend binge-watching Netflix as I ground each blade in my collection over successively finer grade stones to be rewarded with merely “adequately” sharpened knives.
I am all for knowing the basics - nixtamalizing my own corn for tortillas, smelting copper to make my husband a watch, etc. But I also care about results, and the result/effort ratio on the water stone front was for shit.
So I broke down and bought a belt grinder designed specifically for kitchen knives. Mine is from Work Sharp, but there are other systems out there. The one I bought has an angle guide specifically for Japanese knives, which have a narrower angle than western knives.
The photo on the left shows my chef’s knife after the marble incident. Dull, rounded edge. Chips. Totally fucky.
I took it to the grinder and it was perfect again. The investment in the sharpener saved the knife and I didn’t have to sell my daughter off for medical experiments. Money well spent in both our opinions.
I still use those water stones for other types of knives, and maybe one day I will master them. But I suspect I will master smelting before then.
In Conclusion:
Get the best knives that fit your budget and treat them right. Do not use those knives to cut on stone, concrete, farm equipment, or public installations. Do not use them to pry open bottle caps or some shit. Hone them frequently. Keep them sharp. Then you, too, can be Gordon Ramsay.
Sort of.