I recently got a PM from a follower named Kevin about knives - something he rightly thought I might have some opinions on and I've been considering doing a post on that subject but it's one I haven't tackled because it's rather controversial and, like politics, people are pretty entrenched on their views.
But it is something that I am really into - knives are the most elemental tools and I'd guess that if we gathered up all the ones in the house we'd have maybe three or four dozen. I have at least a dozen pocket knives.
Here's a link to Kevin's thread.
Knives are the original tool, right?! I'm always amazed at the depth of knowledge on this site so figure I'd see what you all have to say vs setting up a new account on Chowhound or some other food related site.
I want to get my wife some 'good' knives and given I know nothing about knives I figured you and your depth of knowledge on almost any tool likely would
Any advice on what to look for vs not?
Looking to spend ~$300 for a nice set.
Let me know your thoughts!
There's some good thoughts but I think that the whole knife thing tends to go in the same vein as the whole, "what's the best camera" question and that question and the knife question need some heading off at the pass.
First I want to address the elephant in the room - the "set".
You don't need a set. Don't buy a set. The whole "set" thing is a marketing scam designed to trick you into spending money. You need only two knives in your life: an 8-10" chef's knife and a paring knife. Don't believe otherwise. I used to think that a bread knife was part of that mix but that was before I learned how to sharpen a knife. Bread knives are not needed if you have a sharp chef's knife.
Okay, some history. Just so you know where I'm coming from.
My dad always sharpened knives with a whetstone. I tried and never seemed to have his patience or skill and was always impressed when I'd buy a new knife because that was as sharp as it would ever get - it was on a downhill slope with me as it's owner.
I was married before Judiaann to the god daughter of Jaque Pepin and her father was an amazing chef as well - Jaque and Jean Claude were the chef's for François Mitterrand, France's President. When I first met Jean Claude he invited me into his kitchen and asked me to chop some onions for him.
I did it all wrong as you might imagine.
From Jean Claude and Jaque I learned knife techniques and basic cooking skills. I once won a guacamole competition between the three of us at Jaque's house in Mexico. That's my one and only culinary claim to fame.
Fast forward to years later meeting Judiaann who worked at the French Culinary Institute (an unrelated but odd coincidence). I took a knife skills class with her and realized that my knives and hers really weren't that sharp and perhaps a whetstone wasn't the answer I was looking for. Thus started my quest.
I don't remember how I met Chad Ward, most likely through friends in the culinary world, and he'd just written a pretty great book about knives. I read this book and finally decided to an actual knife sharpening "system" instead of abusing my knives with my incompetence.
Let's circle this back to the set. Buying a set of knives is like buying a camera and a bunch of cheap lenses all at once in a camera bag. You don't buy a set of houses or a set of cars (well, some do) you do the research and find the right one for you and then spend the money on one good one. That bag of glass does not make you a photographer and that block of knives isn't making you a chef. You're better served by getting one great lens and learning it.
The whole discussion of German vs Japanese steel is a lot like the pontificating of Leica vs Nikon in that very few people will ever be able to see or understand the differences and how sharp your glass is really isn't a question if you can't focus.
So let's focus for a minute on what a knifes job is so we can defuse the steel question.
A knife is a piece of steel that's been hardened and sharpened in order to create an edge that will cut.
That's the general definition that I'm going with. The minutia is that steel is not one thing so your edge should not be either. A very hard steel can be sharpened to a very steep angle but then it risks chipping. A more forgiving steel can withstand chipping but not hold up to a steep angle. It's a compromise.
Understanding this compromise helps you understand that there's no "perfect" steel or "perfect" knife. This is the main thing to understand and it's a lot like the camera discussion - the camera is a tool and understanding your tool and it's limitations is how you become better.
This is my third (and last) knife sharpening system. It's a Wicked Edge Pro system. Buying a jig to sharpen your knives isn't cheating. That's what I thought at first. If I practiced I'd eventually get a really sharp knife with a whetstone. I thought that for at least 10 years and never had a sharp knife. The day after buying my first sharpening jig I sharpened my first knife to a scary edge that was as sharp as any new knife I'd ever owned and I've never looked back.
The basic premise of a knife sharpening jig is that you hold the blade at a fixed angle to the stone and you grind the steel with progressively finer grits of abrasives at that set angle thus refining that edge. While it might be possible to teach your hand the difference in feel between a 17 degree and a 21 degree angle it's not something I want to spend my life doing. For the same reason I don't want to memorize phone numbers - I can have a machine do that for me.
So I'm going to take you through my process.
This is a Shun "Kramer" and I put that in quotes because I've never been impressed with this knife. It's felt like the combined sell out of two names that independently were great but combined to make a compromise no one is happy about. This knife is brittle and chips a lot.
Through the loupe you can see these micro chips in the blade. In a perfect world we'd have a knife for boning chicken, one for cutting vegetables, one just for tomatoes but the reality is you probably have one favorite knife and you do most everything with that.
This is the same as the camera advice - buy a good knife that you really like and then buy good method to keep that knife sharp. Keeping it sharp is more important than what the steel is or where it's made.
When you have a knife sharpening jig you suddenly have the thing that allows you to achieve perfection in a blade - repeatability. There's a reason mills have dials with numbers and DRO's that measure into the thousands. Our ability to repeat and measure a procedure with accuracy is what creates a better result. So it will not surprise you that I keep a log of my knives and how I sharpen them. This is how I match the angle of the edge to the steel. I tried to sharpen the Kramer at 17 degrees but it hasn't held up so I've moved to 19 degrees.
To determine the angle of a new blade (or check an old one) I'll use the loupe to check for cracks and the sharpie to draw a line on the blades edge.
Then I run a smooth stone along the edge at the angle I want and see if it takes off all the sharpie or if it leaves it at the top or bottom.
Referring to my spreadsheets notes means I don't usually need to bother with this step but for a new knife I like to check it, adjust the angle and figure out what I'm starting with.
The basic kit I think comes with two or three sets of stone - or in this case diamond impregnated sharpening steels. The far right and left are really optional. I rarely use the 50 - it's way too coarse - and generally will start a regrind with the 100.
The process is pretty basic: clamp the knife in the clamp, set the angle via the lever (or whatever method you have) and then begin moving the stone along one side of the knife until you have developed a burr on the opposing side.
The movement isn't too critical because the jig is maintaining the main essential angle. I'll go up and down and then vary with some strokes angling down and forward and then down and backwards.
But the burr is essential. Here's your deep dive into what the burr is:
The Science of Sharp
As you get closer to achieving an edge the fine part of the steel will begin to bend over on the opposite side that you're working. It's very small and not something you can see save for the Science of Sharp link above.
But you can feel it. It feels like a rough edge or a single line of micro velcro that catches your skin as you swipe up the blade from the spine to the edge. Your goal is to get your blade to the point where you feel this burr along the whole edge on one side and then to repeat the process on the other side. If you don't get the burr you haven't sharpened your blade to its edge yet and you won't get a sharp knife.
The process is to raise a burr on side one with the 100 grit and then the other side. Then move to 200, continuing to raise the burr on each side before you move to the next grit. I quit checking for the burr when I get to 400 at which point I just alternate strokes. The burr still exists but it's become so small it's hard to feel. From 400 up we've established the geometry and now we're refining the edge. Lather, rinse, repeat with each stone getting progressively finer.
The whole stropping thing never made sense to me because it turns out stropping a dull blade doesn't do much. A sharp blade however can really benefit. You don't need anything fancy. I bought a cheap leather belt from Goodwill, cut it in half and glued
it to both sides of a paddle I made from baltic birch. You can even see the belt holes. On one side I put a very small amount of Mothers Aluminum Polish - that amount shown is way too much but will last for the next year.
Stropping is just further polishing the edge and getting rid of the microscopic burr that's left after your final stone work. Draw the knife away from the edge at the same angle as you sharpened it at. It's not critical as the leather has some give. After a few stokes on both sides of the blade flip the strop over and do a few on the back side which is just leather with nothing on it.
You can shave your arm but a newspaper is a good indicator of a job well done. By virtue of it's flimsiness it shows off a good edge because your blade should glide through the paper with zero resistance.
A truly sharp blade will cut into a curved fold of paper with no effort.
If we come back to this photo my pairing knife is a cheap German blade. I'd like and need a good paring knife but honestly only Judiaann uses the paring knife. The bread knife I've not used in five or six years and even Judiaann quit using it once we had consistently sharp knives. The middle knife is interesting. It was a serrated Shun tomato knife but it became dull as all serrated knives do so as an experiment I sharpened it to an extremely steep angle of 15 degrees with only the 100 grit stone leaving a very steep and rough edge. It can slice transparently thin slices from a tomato because the rough edge helps tear the tough skin of a tomato - it's a single use knife that is very nice to have.
This Misano has great steel and I keep it razor sharp at 15 degrees but mostly only use it for vegetables so I don't abuse the super fine edge. I also don't go higher than 800 grit because the tooth left works like the tomato knife - micro serrations that bite into the thing your cutting - which, let's be honest, is probably onions. I think onions make up about 70% of all the cutting in the house. Well, onions and garlic.
The Shun Kramer is the all around knife. I'll take it to a razors edge and it lasts for maybe a month. Unlike my cameras where my Leica is my favorite tool I don't have a favorite knife. I'd like a damascus knife, I'd like a custom knife and I think something shaped like the Shun Kramer is a good shape but with better steel and a concave hollow grind to release food would be awesome.
At some point I'll try to make my perfect chef's knife but for now I'm content with these because they're extremely sharp and that's much more important then where they came from or what steel they're made of. I hope I demystified some of the whole knife thing. Get a good knife that you really love to use and hold. More importantly get a good system that allows you to perfectly and consistently get a super sharp edge.
Gregor
