[Music Playing]
Hi, I am Rita Heikenfeld and welcome to Love Starts in the Kitchen.
Well, with this segment, I am going to try to give you a little tip from the kitchen and today we are going to talk about knives, cutlery and how to sharpen them. I have got two chef’s knives here, actually, two real different ones.
This is a traditional chef’s knife if you look it got great balance. And if you look at the curvature on the bottom of the knife, it is rather curved, it is great for chopping and mincing. You can rock and roll and gives you great, great balance.
Now, this is also a chef’s knife. But look at this, this is a Japanese chef’s knife and if you look at it from this angle, the spine goes all the way down to the tip of the blade. And if you look at this, the curve of this versus this, the santoku which is what it is called is more straight, it is also wider so you can use it as a scoop.
But, I want to talk a little bit about this gratons or channels. Now, what that does is if you are slicing like meat or cheese that creates a layer of air so foods do not stick. Now, what I buy a knife just for this gratons probably not, but that is a great little added feature. And, when you buy chef’s knives, look at all the ones that appeal to you and pick up the chef’s knife in many different categories, see if there is three or four that you like, whichever one feels great in your hand, that is the line you should go with. It should feel like an extension of your hand. A good chef’s knife should fall slightly to the center like that and that is good because then, your wrist is not doing a lot of work, you are not going to get carpal tunnel because naturally it is going to fall down into the food.
How to sharpen?
Now, I know just in—probably go like this. You see that on TV, the chefs, they go from the heel to the front like this, like they did not (Muffled), I never got the hand of that. So, what I do and it works quite well I might add, is when you think of tiptoe through the tulips, you want to go from the tip of the heel all the way down to the toe. So, pretend like you are slicing deli meat like maybe 20-degree angle then go from the tip all the way to the toe. And if you do that, three or four times on each side like this, what you are going to do is you are going to realign the blade.
Now, unless this steel or honer has diamond chips in it, it is not going to sharpen the dull knife. All honer or steel does usually is realign the edge of the blade, if you look at this under microscope, you would see a little ragged in the edges, just from the use of it and the honer actually takes a little bit of the metal work and it just again realigns that blade.
So, if you do this every three or four times, few swipes three or four on each side, each time you use it, you are not ever going to need anybody to sharpen it. So, that is your tip of the day, how to choose and how to sharpen chef’s knives.
[Music Playing]
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services