Knowing how to sharpen your knife is an essential skill every chef must have. This is because a sharp chef knife is one of the chef's most essential tools, since a quality cut helps preserve the true flavors of the ingredients used.
Cutting with a dull knife can damage the ingredients and change their taste and appearance for the worse. A dull knife can also injure the chef because it is more prone to slipping when cutting food. The best chefs end their workday by sharpening their knives and may even sharpen the knives again just before they use them.
Chef Knife
There are two methods of sharpening your knife - using a whetstone or steel. Sharpening a knife with a stone is considered the best way of keeping the edge of your knife sharp, while steel is used to give knives a quick sharpening by chefs who have little time to devote to the task. Whichever method you use, make sure you get the highest quality of stone or steel that you can afford, so that they will last longer and save you money in the long run. And, of course, better-quality products will give you better results.
Here is the basic procedure of how to sharpen your knife with a stone. Prepare the stone by moistening the surface with water to lubricate it. Put the stone in water and if you see bubbles, then you need to immerse it in shallow water for ten to twenty minutes; otherwise, just keep the surface moist. Hold the blade at a ten- to twenty-degree angle to the stone; smaller angles result in sharper edges but larger angles mean that the knife is less prone to chipping.
While holding the knife at the desired angle, slide the knife, starting at the tip, from the end of the stone closest to you to the farther side using a firm pressure. Return to the near side, and then repeat, overlapping sections of the knife during the process. Continue until you've created a burr (rough upturned edge) on the opposite side of the blade. Repeat the process on the opposite side.
Meanwhile, here is how to sharpen your knife using a sharpening steel. Hold the knife with your cutting hand and the steel with the other hand against the blade. Hold the knife at an angle to the steel with the handle end of the blade touching it. Draw the knife across the top of the steel using light to medium pressure and moving from the bottom to the tip.