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5 Pro Tips for Knife Care
“Always remember: The knife is never to blame!”
This quote comes from none other than Daniel Boulud, a French star chef who owns several award-winning restaurants in international cities. His eponymous restaurant “Daniel” in New York City, which has been awarded two Michelin stars, is the most famous.
At Butch, we agree with Maître Boulud in a toned-down form: In most cases, it is actually not the knife's fault, but rather improper handling or insufficient care. To avoid frustration with your knives, we have summarized five important tips for you - for the proper use and professional care of your kitchen knives:
1) Choose the right knife for the task at hand
You can cut with any knife, of course. That's what knives are for. However, the individual blade shape and length of different knives are designed for specific cutting tasks. For example, meat or fillet knives have a relatively narrow blade, which reduces friction values, physiologically speaking. This makes it easier to cleanly fillet and portion meat or fish with these knives.
If you choose the "wrong" or unsuitable knife for certain cutting tasks, you can even damage the knife in the worst case. The best examples of this are chopping with a chef's knife or cutting bread with a ham knife. In these tasks, the blades are so heavily stressed that the sharpness quickly decreases and the edge can even be damaged.
2) Cut with the knife
"Yes, what else" you might think at first when you read this sentence. Anyone who has completed a culinary education in the kitchen probably knows the same instruction: "Cut, don't press!"
Because cutting doesn't mean just placing the knife on the cutting material and simply pressing down. Cutting means making a horizontal forward or backward motion, or a slightly diagonal motion in the case of a rocking cut.
For example, when cutting bread, you automatically make the correct cutting motion. Back and forth. That's it!
3) Clean your knife immediately and by hand
Cutting work done, everything in a bowl, pot or pan and now it's time to clean up. Cookware, peelers, knives - put them all in the dishwasher. Granted, that would be practical. But not smart!
It's much better if you clean your knife by hand immediately after cutting. Long soaking baths, high temperatures in the dishwasher, and aggressive cleaning agents - all of this damages your knife. The sharpness is lost more quickly and the blade can even be damaged in the long run. Hand cleaning is gentle and extends the durability and lifespan of your knife many times over.
Rinse your knife under running water with some dish soap and a sponge. Then dry it well, and you're done. To avoid injury, you should clean and dry the knife from the spine to the edge. This is also better for your dish towels. All in all, such a knife cleaning takes only 30 seconds, and your knife is ready for the next task afterwards.
4) Sharpen your knives regularly
No matter how high-quality or expensive your knives are - every blade loses sharpness with every cut. Depending on the steel and grind, more or less. To keep your knife sharp for a long time, you should sharpen or hone it in between. There are two main methods: deburring or sharpening:
Deburring is done with a classic honing steel. Microscopically fine bends in the edge are straightened out with it. Deburring extends the time until the knife needs to be properly sharpened again.
When sharpening with ceramic or diamond-coated sharpeners, material is removed from the blade, and with some practice, the original sharpness can be restored. If you consistently sharpen your knife at intervals, only a small amount of material is removed from the edge. And the less material is removed, the longer the life of your knife.
Once you have reached an expert level in sharpening, you can confidently do without a sharpening service from your knife manufacturer. Otherwise, you should have your knife professionally serviced every few years (depending on quality and frequency of use).
5) Store your knives safely
Unfortunately, the main storage location for knives is the drawer. Along with other knives, peelers, whisks, and other kitchen tools. If you think that's fine and your knives are lying there well, we have to disagree with you for once.
Every time you open the drawer, the knife edge rubs against the neighboring drawers. You may not immediately notice any damage, but the blade will noticeably dull faster as a result. And may even get damaged. Or your other kitchen tools, or your drawer, or even your fingers, or, or, or ...
The best solution is a knife block. Your knives are safely and securely stored in it (or on it, in the case of magnetic knife blocks). In addition, you always have your knives within reach. Whether you prefer the version for inserting or the magnetic version doesn't matter. However, please avoid knife blocks that are equipped with plastic bristles instead of slots for inserting. In our opinion, these knife blocks are not much better than the kitchen drawer.
If you don't have space in the kitchen for a freestanding knife block, there is still the alternative of a magnetic knife strip that you can attach to the wall to save space. If nothing else remains and you have to store the knives in the drawer, please get a suitable blade guard to put on. It's not perfect, but it's a good and above all safe solution for blade and fingers.
Our Extra Tip: Use the Right Cutting Board
From time to time, our customers in our store report that their knives quickly become dull. This naturally piques our curiosity, and we want to know why. In addition to not sharpening them, it often turns out that the cutting board is the reason for dull knives. Because even though cutting boards made of stone or glass are admittedly practical and easy to care for, they are unfortunately the absolutely wrong choice for your knives. The surface is too hard for the blades, causing the edges to dull more quickly.
It's better to use plastic cutting boards, as long as the plastic isn't too hard. But the perfect material for cutting boards remains wood. Cutting boards made of wood are equally hard enough to be stable, but also give enough to keep the edge from becoming dull. Plus, cutting boards made of wood just look the best.
If you're thinking about care, hygiene, and similar issues with wooden cutting boards, check out our magazine article on Caring for Wooden Cutting Boards. There, we answer most of the questions on this topic.
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