The Best Way To Sharpen & Clean Knives (And The Worst) | Epicurious

i'm frank proto i'm a professional chef and a culinary instructor and this is everything you need to know about taking care of and sharpening your knives i did it i am a fruit ninja i'm going to show you different methods on how to sharpen your knives maintain them and how to be safe while you use them this is knife care 101. grandma might have sharpened her knives by rubbing two knives together it doesn't work i'm going to show you the right way chefs are always focused on having sharp knives because dull knives are a danger in the kitchen dull knives take more pressure to cut with more of a chance you're going to slip and hurt yourself a sharp knife gives you precision cuts that lets your food cook evenly taking about 20 minutes every few months to sharpen your knives makes all the difference let's get into how we maintain them the way that i test the knife to see if it's sharp as i turn it over i take my thumb and i run it over the blade lightly and what you'll feel is it drags on your fingerprint right you can feel that there's a little bit of a tug on your finger if your knife was dull it would feel like you're running over kind of like a nice smooth bump with things like scallions you can actually hear a sharp knife right you barely hear a whisper when i cut with a dull knife though it makes a much louder noise because it's crushing the scallion and then cutting it you can also see that there's a lot more moisture on my board when i use the dull knife whereas the sharp knife no moisture you can see that i have to put a fair amount of pressure on it you can see that i'm getting tearing when i cut so we're crushing our food rather than slicing it and that's not what we want with a sharp knife you see how thin we can cut if it was a dull knife you would not get that beautiful paper thin slice it's like a whisper it's like a whisper my favorite way to sharpen knives is by hand with a water stone there are other types of stones there's an oil stone and a water stone with an oil stone you need to buy mineral oil that won't go bad or rancid it's sticky they get gummy i find the water stone is the easiest to maintain all i need is some cool water first thing i like to do with the water stone is soak it right generally i like to soak my water stone for about 30 minutes just put it in water you'll see there's lots of bubbles and that basically means that the water stone is absorbing some water we soak this on so it keeps our knife cool and lubricated when we're sharpening i know my water stone is ready to use when i stop seeing lots of bubbles and this looks like it's soaked pretty well this stone has two grits on it it has a six thousand and a one thousand one thousand being a rougher grit six thousand being super smooth i always start with the rougher grip because that's going to basically give our blade shape and define our blade whereas the higher grit is going to give it that nice sharp edge i like to put my stone in front of me facing away from me a lot of times this is slippery what you can do is you can use a wet towel underneath to keep this from sliding this little piece is a guide this slides onto the back of the knife and it gives you a really good angle for your knife it's probably more like a 17 or 18 degree angle the problem i have with these guides is that i could lose this this can end up in the trash right this ends up in the trash and then what do i do if you're just beginning by all means use the guide but as a professional i like to do it without the guide so let's go this is basically a 90 degree angle to the stone we cut that in half it's a 45 degree angle and then in half again it's about 22 and a half it's not the angle for every knife this is just how i teach it to get a really good result and i like to just make sure that my stone stays a little wet i'm going to start with that angle and i'm using my right hand to push down i'm using my fingers to push down as well i'm putting about three to four pounds of pressure on this how do i know it's three to four pounds of pressure i know what it feels like i've been doing this for years but if you don't know you can always get a scale and push down and feel what three or four pounds of pressure feels like start at the tip push the knife away from me turn it over and pull the knife towards me so there's a little bit of particles on the sharpener and that's basically just the knife kind of being worn away anytime i start to see them i'm going to add a little more water and i'm going to go back into it and i'm going to use this side until i start to get a nice sharp blade and once i can start to feel that it's getting sharp that's when i'm going to turn it over and go to the finer grit it doesn't have to take a long time right and now we're going to do is we're going to take the stone and we're going to turn it over and now i'm going to go on the fine side and do the same thing make sure you make a mess it's starting to feel good i can feel that i'm getting that nice sharp edge do i look like uh like a maniac when i do this [Applause] this is the method that i choose to sharpen my knives i give it a five out of five it definitely takes a little bit of skill and practice but it's well worth it all i'm going to do now is run it over a steel just to hone that edge and i think we're good to go this piece of equipment is not a knife sharpener we call it a honing steel it's for honing whenever i'm prepping every 10 15 minutes run my knife over the steel put it back it's part of my kit basically what this does is it takes your blade and keeps your blade tuned up between sharpenings right you can take a dull blade and run it over this holding steel for a month and it's not going to make it sharper but what it does do is it takes our blade that's fairly sharp and it tunes it up your blade has like micro serrations and they kind of get a little twisted occasionally and when you run it over the steel it lines them up again and keeps your blade sharp the way that i use the honing steel is i'm basically starting at the same angle that i sharpen with and i start at the bottom of the knife with a bolster i'm going to run it over and down over and down and basically i'm just going to run it over until i feel that that edge is nice and sharp right some people don't want to cut towards themselves or or hone towards themselves you can go like this away from you or some people actually put on the table so they can hone straight down i find that serrated knives are really hard to sharpen i'm not sure people even sharpen their serrated knives when i was a cook i use this knife a lot and basically when it got dull i would probably recycle it but what i do when i'm using serrated knives is while they're sharp i tend to hone them a little bit more and basically what i do is i get in between the serrations and i just kind of run my knife at that angle that i sharpen at and then on the flat side i'm just going to run my flat side over right this doesn't sharpen the knife but it does keep it in tune on the franco-meter honing is super important it's a 5 out of 5. let's move on to other methods that i prefer a lot less this is a manual sharpener and basically what this has is two ceramic or metal blades in it that you drag your knife through and i tend to use this with knives that aren't really expensive in order to use the manual sharpener what i'm going to do is i'm going to hold it firmly it has kind of sticky things here there's a course and a fine and what i'm going to do is i'm going to hold it straight up and down and drag it across now what i find is this if you can see i'm getting metal shavings right which i don't really want in my food metal shavings do not equal food and this is why i don't use it with my good knives because basically what this is doing is it's shaving the metal down to get it sharp so if you have a knife that's kind of not super expensive drag it straight across a couple of times go from the course to the fine it also is very noisy and kind of like gives you the shivers and it gives you an okay sharpness but whenever i use this method i'm constantly going back and re-sharpening it's not a lasting sharpness so on the franco-meter scale of one to five i kind of give this i don't know maybe a two i just don't think that this is the best way to maintain your knives properly another option is one of these doohickeys this is an electric sharpener it has two abrasive wheels in it you know anytime we get into abrasives that are moving really fast i get a little worried that the knife's going to get heated up and lose some of that temper what temper is is they heat treat the knife and they're heat treated to keep them not only flexible but also for them to hold their edge really well so this i feel it might heat it up and that's why i kind of stay away from them this little machine there's two sides there's a left side on the right side you turn it on and all you do is start at the bottom pull it through and this model will shut off when it's ready it says the sound is horrible it's kind of like you know giving me a little chills up my spine this is like a mad max orchestra right here right that's what dubstep sounds like if that's what dubstep sounds like i don't like it these old ears don't like the dubstep once it goes down to low they say they run it through the horner and i don't know what that does it sounds to me like it's just dulling the knife not my favorite thing on a franco meter this is basically a one as far as i'm concerned if i can give it a zero i'd give it a zero maybe i'm going to give it a zero if someone put my good knives through this we might have a problem don't come to my house and do that i don't want to go to jail here's a method that i've seen in a lot of restaurants i've seen cooks do this and it's not necessarily sharpening knife but it's kind of giving it a nice hone so i'm looking to use that unglazed portion of the plate so if the whole thing is glazed it's not going to work and that's what you're going to do it's kind of like one of those methods that it might work for you it might not this knife is pretty sharp i feel like it's honing it pretty good i'd say this is probably a 6 000 grit and i can feel that the knife is just getting a little sharper on the franco meter i'm gonna give this a three three and a half now that you know how to sharpen the knives let's talk about proper use and cleaning part of taking carry knives is using the right tool for the right job i would never get a chef knife and try and peel something with it not only is it inefficient it's dangerous you never really want to take a chef knife like this that's got a nice fine blade and like open a can with it or try and chop bones with it that's why we have cleavers and can openers the other important consideration with knives are the type of materials you're cutting on right i've seen like old grandmothers have glass cutting boards and you never want to use a hard surface you always want to use either a plastic a rubber a bamboo or a wooden cutting board when you're cutting your food if you use a hard surface like metal or glass it definitely dulls your knife and you'll have to sharpen it more often another quick tip to keep yourself safe is this get yourself a wet paper towel put it under your cutting board and it'll stop your cutter board from sliding so you can see the bottom cutting board doesn't have the towel but the top board is really firm because it has the towel under it another important step in maintaining your knives is cleaning them properly a couple of things that are no no's right i do not put my knives in a dishwasher putting your knives in a dishwasher heats them past a critical point it ruins the temper of the knives and the knives will not hold an edge the other thing that i do as far as safety is i never put a knife into a sudsy sink if i put this in the bottom of this uh bowl with all the suds i can't see it and if i walk away and someone reaches into that sink they're going to get cut so knives always get put on the side and are cleaned by hand and put away immediately this is how i like to clean my knives i have some warm soapy water here i get a sponge sponge goes in the water i get my knife i'm holding it away from me what i like to do is not run along the blade because this will cut through a sponge i like to run the top of the blade right or i like to go on the sides but i'm always paying attention and being very focused when i do this right i dry my knives as soon as i wash them so they don't get rusted or stained look at that it's gorgeous our knives are clean and dry the last step for maintenance is how we store our knives the way you store your knives is really important in the maintenance of them if you store them improperly they'd get dented and dinged and they will lose their edge really quickly if you put them in a drawer they're going to clatter around and beat each other up and you'll end up with chips and dents and dull knives two of the ways that i like to store knives the block generally i don't have a block in my house just for the fact that it takes up a lot of counter space but if you want to store knives efficiently a block works really well they're easy to get to the other way that you can store them is on a magnetic strip these hang on the wall the knives stick to them keeping the blades safe and away they're not banging into each other and they stay nice and sharp as a chef we're always on the go and when we take our knives with us we use a knife roll and this is my knife roll it is heavy duty canvas with kind of a plastic interior and i have all my knives here they're stored in individual pockets so they don't bang against each other it's compact it's easy it's a quick grab-and-go when you're on the move i hope you learned how to be safe keep your knife sharp and maintain your fruit ninja status i want you to remember dull knives are dangerous knives dull knives suck keep your knives sharp or i'm coming to your house and i'll sharpen them for you people are going to call me on that one [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 3,729,232

Keywords: chef knives, chef's knife care, clean a cooking knife, clean kitchen knives, clean knives, cooking knives, epi, epicurious, frank proto, hone a knife, how to clean a knife, how to clean knives, how to hone a knife, how to sharpen a knife, how to sharpen kitchen knives, how to sharpen knives, how to use a wet stone, kitchen knife care, knife, knife care, knife maintenance, knives, sharpen cooking knives, sharpen kitchen knives, sharpen knife, use a wet stone

Id: t-_qzsMF8RM

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 20 2021