the_elliot•1mo agoMost Upvoted

Appreciation post for the guys who actually sharpen their own knives

Been in kitchens for 12 years and I still see line cooks using those pull-through sharpeners that ruin the edge. I spent 15 minutes last night re-grinding a new guy's chef knife on my stones after he complained it couldn't cut through a tomato. Why do people think a dull knife is just something you deal with?

3 comments

3 Comments

spencer7821mo ago

Read that one guy on here who tested a $50 whetstone setup against those electric sharpeners. He proved out that a decent stone gives you way better edge life than any of the pull-through or electric options. His microscope shots showed the cheap sharpeners were just tearing up the blade steel instead of actually grinding it. That lines up with what I see on the line every day. People think a $15 gadget will fix years of bad habits with a knife.

parker_palmer441mo ago

Hold your horses there. I mean, yeah, the guy with the microscope had some good points, but let's not pretend most people are going to notice an extra 2% of edge life on their $20 kitchen knife. Half the guys in my building still use a dull knife from the block and the food comes out fine. The electric sharpener is for people who don't want to learn a new skill. It's good enough for chopping a bell pepper, man.

seth_shah1mo ago

Used to be a diehard electric sharpener guy myself. Swore by the Chef's Choice until my sous chef brought his home-sharpened Wusthof in and we side by side chopped onions. My blade was chattering, his was slicing clean through without any tearing. Checked both under a magnifying glass later and saw what Spencer's talking about, ragged edge on mine versus a clean line on his. Took me a weekend with a cheap King stone to fix my knives and now I regret all those years of letting a machine eat away my steel. Still have the electric one in the back of the cabinet for emergencies but it feels like using a microwave when you could just toast bread.