591–600 of 697 posts
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I've tried sharpening knives a few times in my life and I've never been able to tell the difference. I agree with the principle, but in practice I simply haven't witnessed it matter.
I think you might be bad at sharpening knives. There is no shame in that, almost everyone is very bad at it, it's difficult to do it properly.
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I used to be a fan, and used them heavily for years. They stay sharp... for a while, and then there's no practical way to re-sharpen them. You get a couple good years out of them and then a lot of mediocre to bad years. Running a steel knife through an electric sharpener once a month (a 2-minute operation) keeps it feeling consistently like new.
Are there consumer electric sharpeners that you'd recommend? My local grocery store does knife sharpening but it's not super convenient
It's cheaper than an electric sharpener and doesn't carry the risk of taking off too much material from a blade due to overenthusiastic use.
I am 100% certain that there are multiple people on this thread that could tell me I'm getting less optimal results than their tools and/or method. I don't care. I'm getting results that work when I cook. I don't trust myself to get the angle right with a diamond stone.
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If she's not used to sharp knives you're not doing her a favour by getting them crazy sharp. Just get a cheap knife sharpener (not a whetstone) with good reviews and sharpen them a bit once every few weeks, it takes a minute, gets good results, and you can work with her on how sharp they should be. Most of the time knives that are too sharp are much more dangerous than knives that are too blunt. The people worrying a…
> Most of the time knives that are too sharp are much more dangerous than knives that are too blunt. With a sharp knife, you cut through food very easily so you use very little force. You also use techniques that prevent you from getting hurt, such as the claw ( https://www.thekitchn.com/knife-skills-the-claw-75998 ). But if someone has used a dull knife for most of their life, they may not have cultivated these skil…
I've been in this position and my partner at the time decided to use a separate set of knives from me, as my sharp knives made her focus on the danger and pulled her out of her zoned out cooking-with-a-glass-of-wine mood.
Fair enough, how she approaches tools isn't my decision.
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I'm still in the camp that air fryers are stupid. A convection oven does literally the same thing. Also, portable air fryers make such small servings that they're useless for people with families. What the hell I going to do with three chicken wings?
You're technically right that an air fryer is a type of small convection oven, but dismissing them as "stupid" ignores why they're so popular. The point isn't that they reinvent physics, it's that they package convection in a way that's faster, uses way less electricity, is easier to clean, and perfectly sized for 1-2 people. Most folks aren't cooking for a big family every meal. I often just want to make fries, roas…
My wife cooks sausages in the oven but I think that is just plain wrong. That is however her singular usage of our oven.
Fwiw we don't cook much western food, and we eat almost no prepackaged food. An air fryer would serve us 0 use.
We do however use our instapot all the time!
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They do not stay sharp. On hard material and when overloaded, they will chip in large, unfixable chunks. On softer material, they continuously sharpen their edges at a microscopic scale, fracturing away tiny chips as they're worn, to new glassy ceramic molecular edges. A well used ceramic blade becomes micro-serrated. This sounds fantastic until you think about what is happening to the shards of hard glassy ceramic w…
People can work up to eating fairly large shards of glass. Eating tiny bits of ceramic occasionally are unlikely to be an actual issue any more than ingesting a little bit of sand.
Sorry, what? Could you perhaps elaborate on this a bit?
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I used to be a fan, and used them heavily for years. They stay sharp... for a while, and then there's no practical way to re-sharpen them. You get a couple good years out of them and then a lot of mediocre to bad years. Running a steel knife through an electric sharpener once a month (a 2-minute operation) keeps it feeling consistently like new.
Are there consumer electric sharpeners that you'd recommend? My local grocery store does knife sharpening but it's not super convenient
If you're an amateur and really want to spend this much money, get a good enough knife (e.g. the classic victorinox) and a chef's choice electric sharpener, and you won't have any more issues.
I've read multiple reviews saying the chefs choice sharpeners are basically useless. Having owned 2 of them I can confirm they seem to do almost nothing after the first few times using them. A few YT knife channels have done deep dives showing why they stop working soon after purchase, the details escape me but I have to agree with the end result....
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Such people should perhaps consider a ceramic-bladed knife. They stay sharp basically forever because the blade is extremely hard, with the downside that it's not repairable with ordinary equipment if chipped. But if the owner would never maintain their metal knife anyway, then it's not _really_ a downside.
They do not stay sharp. On hard material and when overloaded, they will chip in large, unfixable chunks. On softer material, they continuously sharpen their edges at a microscopic scale, fracturing away tiny chips as they're worn, to new glassy ceramic molecular edges. A well used ceramic blade becomes micro-serrated. This sounds fantastic until you think about what is happening to the shards of hard glassy ceramic w…
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Most people I know never sharpen their knives. My grandmothers (both of whom cooked for all branches of the family every day when I was a kid) never did. I think if a knife got too dull they simply chucked it out and got a new one. And probably cut themselves a few times until it got dulled enough. Anyway that's three kinds of people: two kinds of foodies, and everyone else.
How can you know your grandmothers never sharpened it? In my experience grandmothers tend to have a steel lying in a drawer and use it at least before cutting through expensive meat. And they use professional sharpening services once in a year. You wouldn’t actually notice as a child.