A chef's guide to sharpening knives

Apols for the lack of blog-action of late, been pretty busy at the restaurant in the run up to Christmas.

But! Am now going to make up for lost time, starting with promised post on sharpening knives. A follow up to my previous 'guide to knives' post, this is a (hopefully) helpful guide to sharpening keeping them sharp.

Two key points to start:

1) Sharpening your knife/knives is well worth it - a cheap knife kept sharp is much more useful than an expensive knife allowed to go dull.

2) If you're a home cook then the effort required to keep your knives sharp is minimal - one, maybe two pieces, of equipment, a bit of know-how and a few minutes of your time every so often is all that's needed.


Whether chef or occasional home cook, a sharp knife will make your life sooo much easier in the kitchen. You get things done faster and with less effort, your knife skills to improve more quickly and, frankly, you just cant do do lots of things (think a fillet fish, score a pork belly, finely chop a shallot etc) at all unless you have a sharp knife.

Most importantly you'll enjoy cooking more with a nice sharp knife.

So what's the best way to keep your knife or knives sharp?

Well, there's basically three categories here:

1. A steel (a hand-held sharpening stick)

2. A stone (a block of special sharpening stone)

3. Home use sharpening gadgets.

Home use gadgets

So lets start with the most user friendly method first: home use gadgets. There's all sorts of run-through and pull through contraptions out there which claim to be effective and fool-proof sharpeners. Many are undoubtedly fairly crap, so be a bit cautious if you've got expensive knives you don't fancy ruining, but there are some good ones out there.

From what I know the run-through water wheels produce the best results and are easy to use and not especially expensive. They look like this:




A run through water wheel gismo - a good easy use choice.





Here's one for around the £20 mark. These do really work and, if you follow the basic instructions, are pretty fool proof.

They're a good option for the home cook.

If you want to see one in action here's a short video from The Japanese Knife Company (he uses one at about 4:30 minutes in):



As the guy says in the vid these multi wheel sharpeners will, with a bit of work on the coarsest setting, be able to bring a blunt knife back to a place where you can then sharpen it up to a good edge.


So next are the more cheffy options - steels and stones....

A steel

A steel is basically a sharpening stick with a handle (the ones you see show-off chefs attempting to wave around faster than each other). The key thing to remember here is that a steel will sharpen your knife quite superficially i.e make it quite quickly a little sharper, but it wont last long, and it won't do enough to make a blunt knife sharp.

Chef's use steels as a handy way to give their knives a quick boost of sharpness e.g if you're just about to fillet a fish. Chef's tend to use stones before or after work, whereas during work when you're busy you have a steel to hand.

At home you could probably get away with just having a steel - as long as your knife or knives are fairly sharp to start with, and you keep in the habit of using it fairly regularly so they never get too dull.

So which one to buy?

They range from really coarse steel rods to very expensive ceramic numbers. The ceramic ones tend to be high quality but can break easily, the best option in my opinion and the one that most chefs I know go for, is a diamond edged steel. These are really light and durable, and not expensive: you can pick up one for about £20 quid e.g this one.

Here's a slightly random but helpful video of some American guy in his cook shop demonstrating the basics of the technique needed for using a steel.









A diamond edge steel - a good buy at under 20 notes.



N.B it's worth saying that, as with the gadgets above, don't use that cheap 'n' nasty steel you got free with your £20 knife set on your expensive new knife - you'll do more harm than good. Better to buy a new one or use a different method.

A stone

If you're a chef, or want to really get into sharpening your knives, then investing in a stone is the way to go.

Using a stone is really satisfying, and, once you get the technique down you can get a knife razor razor sharp, and then using it fairly regularly will mean you'll keep it that way.

Stones come in different grades - indicating how rough/smooth they are. As I understand it there's different grading systems - with the Japanese one 100 is really coarse, 1000 really fine, I believe there's also a US grading system which runs up to 30000 or something.

The point being you need a coarse stone to grind a fairly dull knife back to a state where you can then use a fine (finishing) stone to make it properly sharp.

I use a fine (Japanese 1000 grade) Kin stone (the waterstone WA1000 on this list) to keep my knives sharp. I try to sharpen them about twice a week which means it's regular enough so that they stay pretty sharp all the time so I don't tend to need to grind down the knives using a coarser stone.

But generally a good option is to have a two sided stone, which has both rough and coarse grades. This means you can both grind down and finish a blade.













A two sided whetstone - the cheffy choice.


Anyway. Rather than me ramble on.... better to watch the Japanese Knife Co video embedded above, and then this, the second part below. Together they explain brilliantly the technique and principles behind using a whetstone on a knife:



It's worth mentioning that there are also ceramic stones available which don't need water or pre-soaking, but they are quite a lot more pricey (as you can see from the prices on the Kin sharpening page).

So that's my take on the slightly confusing world of sharpening - hope it's helpful, definitely watch the vids above, they're really useful.

Andy

A chef's guide to knives

I thought I’d share a bit of what I’ve learnt about knives since becoming a full time chef, and give a few knife-themed recommendations, for what it’s worth.

I’m by no means some all-knowledgeable sushi knife master, but being a chef in a good kitchen you naturally learn a good knife from a bad one, and get an idea of what you need...and what you don’t.

Here’s a snap of most of my knives - I keep the majority of them in my knife roll at the restaurant every day, a couple I keep at home in my kitchen.

The obvious thing to say here is that working in a restaurant means I need a fair few more types of knife than you'd ever really need cooking at home (see section on that further down). Plus there's a couple of specialist ones e.g for small Asian fruit.

So, as a chef, here's what I've found I've needed...

• A large 'chef's' knife
  
• A second medium sized knife
• A boning knife
• A small knife
  
• A turning knife
• A serrated knife
• A speed peeler
• A steel, and a stone.
  
• Other stuff - I recon a peeler, fish tweezers, scissors & a microplane
• Specialist things - e.g oyster shucker, curved fruit knife etc.

So, for those interested, here’s the basic groups of knives seen above:

A ‘chef’s knife’

This is a longer bladed all round knife. It’s probably the most used and useful knife both in a professional kitchen and is the best place to start for a general use knife in the home kitchen. Used especially for cutting vegetables, basic (dicing, slicing...) of meat and fish, and also perfectly suitable for finer knife skills stuff like julienne (v.fine strips) or brunoise (fine dice).

A 'second' knife

I use a smaller second knife, it's a santoku style knife which i try and keep extra sharp, and use especially for finer knife skills stuff which, at Nahm, tends to mean things like lime leaf chiffonade, chilli julienne and alike.

A smaller blade means a bit more control and it’s nice to have a separate knife from the one I use for the less precise more blunting activities like slicing tough lemongrass and galangal.

Here's my santoku, it's made by Kin (more on them below):

A boning knife

A boning knife is a designed for meat e.g jointing a chicken or removing the bone from a leg of lamb. It needs to be sharp, but also robust as it’s going to come up against bone and cartilage – you don’t want to be using your best handmade Japanese knife for this kind of thing. For me i a cheap but reliable brand like Victorinox is perfect here.

Filleting knife

A filleting knife is basically for fish. Normally medium length and slender, sometimes flexible (which is especially useful when filleting flat fish) but many chefs just use a smallish sharp general use knife for fish. Personal preference really.

Other stuff?

Other knives I regularly use:

A serrated 'bread' knife for bread, tomatoes and for larger fruit prep.

A small sharp knife for carving fruit and for other assorted fiddly slicing jobs.

A small curved 'turning' knife - for peeling shallots, cleaning certain small fruits and other bits n bobs.

A 'rambutan' knife (yellow handle in pic) - for taking the stones out of small fruit like longans or rambutans and similar fiddly jobs.

A speed peeler - essential £2 piece of kit. Fish tweezers, oh and scissors (ideally ones strong enough to cut the backbone out of a chicken or two)

A microplane - v.useful all purpose grater - especially if, your partial to finishing all your dishes Jamie-style with a showering of lemon zest or parmesan (accompanying Essex boy commentary is optional).

A steel and a stone - a steel being the handy way to quickly (but fairly superficially) sharpen knives. A stone is where you do the serious sharpening (think I'm going to do further post just on the subject of sharpening).

So what do you need at home?

Not too much really. Quality over quantity is defo the way to go methinks:

• One good quality medium sized chef's knife
• Some means of sharpening above knife - steel stone or one of those run through things
  
• A basic serrated knife
• A small sharp knife
  
• Other obvious stuff - scissors, peeler etc, plus fish tweezers are probably worth having around.

As mentioned above less is almost certainly more here: if you just buy one or two good quality knives (i.e instead of a whole jumbled knife set) then you can probably afford better quality, plus you'll probably take better care of what you do have.

Generally buying a 'knife set' will mean at the very least buying stuff you don't need / wont use, and, unless you're paying a fortune, the knives in question will probably be shite too!

Final point here is that I believe it's much better for your knife skills to be using one or two good quality knives regularly rather than picking up a different one every time you want to chop a carrot - being familiar with one good knife means your chopping will improve more quickly, and you'll probably cut yourself less too!

So what to buy?

I'd say spend most if not all of your budget on one quality general use knife, then buy a basic bread knife, small knife etc if you don't have already.

So for your main knife....well it's personal preference, but a medium length chef's knife is probably the best bet here.

In terms of brand and here's couple of options:

At the cheaper but reliable end are European brands like Wusthof and Sabatier e.g this or this

But you want a really high quality & beautiful knife then Japanese is probably the way to go. Many people instantly think Global...which are ok - they're reliable but fairly pricey and very much mass produced.

Personally I like Kin knives - they make beautiful high quality Japanese knives, and you can buy them online. I'd say the 210mm knife from their professional range would be a great choice for an all rounder: www.kinknives.com/2professional.htm

There's loads of options on their site so have a browse, or if you want go chat to them and try before you buy then look out for their stalls at Taste of London / the BBC Good Food shows etc.

Finally if want to fondle some expensive Japanese knives & are happy to blow a lot of cash ...then head to the Japanese Knife Co shop near Baker St tube in central London www.japaneseknifecompany.com

Their knives do not come cheap but it's worth a trip just for a look round.

So that's my 10cents worth on knives, hope it's vaguely useful / of interest.

Andy

Oh and, as mentioned, I'm going to do a follow up post on what I've learnt about keeping your knives sharp, which is probably the most important part of all...coming soon.