As the pace of life increases, it becomes more important to run an efficient kitchen. Cooking up a healthy meal each evening is often accomplished in a multi-tasked environment. Without a good sharp knife set, your food preparation could suffer.
As sure as death and taxes, your knives will become blunt with use. Handheld knife sharpeners are designed to resolve this problem, quickly and easily restoring the cutting edges of your knives.
Sharpening Blades
There is more than one way to sharpen a dull blade, but nothing beats the convenience of the manual pull through knife sharpener. So, what are your choices?
Honing Rods
A honing rod doesn’t actually sharpen your kitchen knives. It is nonetheless an essential kitchen tool. Every time you use a knife, it loses a little bit of its edge. Microscopic steel bits bend away from the edge and make the blade a little blunter each time.
The honing rod straightens the edge, making the blade sharper. Because a honing rod doesn’t remove any steel from the edge of the blade, you can use it every time you use the knife with no impact on its durability. A sharpener, on the other hand, peels away a little bit of the steel every time you use it.
Eventually honing will no longer do the trick and you’ll have no choice but to sharpen your knives.
Professional sharpeners
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to sharpen your knives is to pack them up to send off to the professional knife sharpener. But unless you have a spare set of knives, this may not be a convenient solution.
Whetstone
Sharpening knives, using the age-old skill on a whetstone, can have costly outcomes unless you know what you’re doing. Knife sharpening on a stone is not as easy as it looks and it could cost you a favorite knife if things go wrong.
If you plan to try your hand a traditional knife sharpening stone, you’ll need to buy yourself at least two whetstones as it takes more than one grit size to get a satisfactory result. The best whetstones are made in Ankarsas, Japan, and Belgium, each place giving them distinctive features.
Handheld Sharpeners
Handheld knife sharpeners are compact, inexpensive, and easy to use. The most effective of these are pull-through sharpeners. They typically have two, or in the case of this one from Cubikook, three stages for sharpening and polishing the knife edge. The sharpening blades and rods offer a combination of options such as tungsten, diamond, and ceramic. These sharpeners are portable and safe to use. A good one will produce a sharp edge that is free of burrs.
What to Look for In Handheld Knife Sharpeners
- Sturdiness and durability – A flimsy knife sharpener isn’t safe. Make sure that you get one that will last for years.
- Ease of use – a good handheld sharpener should require very little skill
- Effectiveness – a good knife sharpener should sharpen the edge with very little effort
- Safety – handheld knife sharpeners should protect your hands from any sharp edges. A non-slip base can help to ensure that the appliance doesn’t slip in use
- Nice smooth finish – the knife edge when finished should contain no burrs or sharp edges.
How to Use a Handheld Sharpener
A handheld knife sharpener is a really simple tool to use. They typically come in two and three stages. Starting with the roughest slot you place the heel of the blade into a slot and pull the blade towards you firmly and steadily. Repeat this action four or five times and then move onto the next slot.
Keeping your kitchen knives sharp has never been easier or more convenient. A handheld sharpener is an essential kitchen tool that will help you to keep your knives in good form, able to chop, dice, and slice your favorite dinner ingredients.
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