Water Cooler: A guide to a sharper and safer knife

A freshly-sharpened knife blade can be intimidating. It could easily nick your skin with a slight touch. But believe it or not, that dull knife you left shuffling around in the back of a drawer is far more dangerous.

Working with a dull knife requires significantly more force and pressure than working with a sharp one. This makes for clumsy execution when chopping and slicing foods, and could even lead to your knife slipping and resulting in a much worse injury than just a small, clean nick. A sharp knife allows for control, and that makes all the difference in kitchen safety and efficiency. Maintaining the sharpness of the blade is what keeps a knife working well for a long time, for budget and high-end knives alike.

One of the other big misconceptions when it comes to sharpening knives begins with the honing steel, often referred to as sharpening steel and hence the reason for confusion. The honing steel or rod, is a long rounded stick typically made from steel or sometimes ceramic. Blade edges bend a bit after repeated use and the honing rod is used to straighten the edge.

When the knife blade is dragged across the rod, it gently realigns the bent edge of the blade according to the angle at which you hold it .

Honing the blade keeps it in shape between sharpening. You can hone the blade every time you use it, or you can just hone when it starts to feel a bit dull. A steel honing rod works for just about every type of straight-edged (and most serrated) blade, but Japanese knives may require a ceramic rod as their blades are typically harder than German-style kitchen knives.

To hone a knife, you can hold the rod horizontally in front of you or vertically on a table with the tip pointed down, whichever is most comfortable for you. Hold the knife in your dominant hand and pull the entire length of the blade across the steel, maintaining a consistent angle. Do this on both sides. Most German- or Western-style knives will be sharpened to around 20 degrees, whereas Japanese knives tend to be sharpened to a 15- to 17-degree angle. Adjust the angle according to the advice of your knife manufacturer.

Once honing becomes ineffective, it is time to sharpen the knife. The difference between sharpening and honing is that while honing only corrects the existing edge, sharpening removes a bit of the metal to create a new blade edge.

The easiest way to sharpen knives is to have a professional do it. There are many local knife sharpening services to choose from around Spokane, such as The Kitchen Engine located in the Flour Mill, Ace Hardware stores, The Sharp Shack located near the Millwood area or Sharp Stuff located on the South Hill. Remember to provide a protective sleeve or wrap the knives in a towel when dropping them off for servicing.

If you want an option to quickly sharpen a knife without much hassle, you can opt for a commercial knife sharpener. These products are obviously not going to get you the same results that a professional sharpening would, but they’re great for the casual home cook who wants a reliably sharp knife and doesn’t have plans to invest in anything high-end.

For the ultimate kitchen nerds, a whetstone is often the favorite choice. Whestones are small blocks of fine stone that sharpen blades like sandpaper. The stone is kept wet while the blade edge is gently rubbed against the stone, and the small metal shavings form a mud on the stone, which functions as an abrasive paste. This takes a lot of practice to get right, but is very rewarding. There are a lot of great tutorials on YouTube that go into detail on the technique.

The last step to knife maintenance is proper storage. Just about anything is better than loose in the kitchen drawer, with the best option being a knife sleeve or roll.