Kitchen Knife care is easy to pay little attention to. Yet, with a little heads up, you can make your sharp edges last longer.
Here are some things to keep in mind in the kitchen when working to extend the life of your knives and their sharpness.
To the extent you can, wash your knives right away after use. This will do a few things. 1) keep them from banging about with other knives in the sink 2) keep them hitting pans or the side of the sink 3) keep them from excessive heat changes from hot water to cold. This will also keep them from hitting the bottom of the sink and creating a risk of cutting you or something you'd rather not cut.
Skip the dishwasher. This will save the metal and the handles from excessive heat (read expansion and contraction forces) and powerful jets thrashing kitchen wares into other kitchen wares in dishwashers.
Knife nicks are rarely from food. The nicks we find in the knives we sharpen seem to most often be the result of running into a metal sheet pan, counter, and/or a marble or glass cutting board. Maybe even a sink or pot has nicked a knife. Mind your cutting edge and keep it away from non-food items, including other knives.
Keep that edge for food. Resist the temptation, rebuild the habit, of using the cutting edge of a knife to scrape food across a cutting board. Rather, use 1) the other edge, the spine of the blade, to move food or 2) grab a bench knife for your kitchen (otherwise known as a dough scraper).
Store 'em separate from each other. The best way would be on a magnetic bar. The water falls off, they air dry and they seldom run into other knives on a bar. Short of that, a counter or drawer block keeps knives separate from each other and the sudden forces of opening and closing a drawer. These blocks are typically made of wood and help knives stay separate from each other. If they must be in a drawer in a loose state, consider some entry level, plastic, blade guards as a way to keep your knives and their cutting edges from running into each other and dulling more swiftly.
In review, to shorten a knife's sharpness do things like:
- Put your knives in the dishwasher
- Toss them in the sink with all the other kitchen things
- Cut on metal pans, especially the edge
- Use the cutting edge (not the spine) to scrape food off cutting boards
To extend sharpness, do the opposite of the list above.
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