YoshiFor homecooks, it will be enough if you sharpen your knife once a month or once every 3 months.
If you are a professional chef or if you work at a fish store, probably everyday.
Because you use your knife a lot.
Basic Idea is..
1. When you feel it is not sharp anymore.
If you feel a little bit of stress while you are using it, you should sharpen your knife.
Your knife doesn’t tell you how sharp it is directly.
Because it doesn’t have a scale like a gas gauge in your car.
But there are some ways to know when to sharpen your knife.
2. When onions make you cry
Yes, you heard right.
If you use a dull knife to cut onions,
You will have more tears in your eyes.
Your dull knife crushes the cells of onions a lot while you cut them.
And onions release a lot of the chemical irritants that make your eyes tear up.
But a sharp knife doesn’t break the cells of onions as much.
3. When you crush tomatoes
The blade doesn’t go through the tomato skin easily if you use a dull knife.
Imagine:
The insides of the tomato comes out because you’re pressing on the tomato instead of cutting it.
You may not realize it, but a dull knife will affect your cooking a lot.
4. It might be a good idea to set a reminder
You can schedule when to sharpen a knife,
Set a reminder every 1 month on your phone.
So you don’t forget to sharpen your knife and you will always have a keen knife.
And you will feel good about yourself in the kitchen all the time.
5. Use a finger nail to check
There is another way to Inspect the edge of the blade.
And what you need is…
A thumb nail.
It’s not a Youtube thumbnail.
It is a real nail on your finger.
Sounds dangerous?
Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt you at all.
It’s just tapping the edge of the knife gently on your thumb nail.
If the blade is slippery on your thumb nail, this part is dull.
If you feel the blade stops on the thumb nail, then this part is sharp.
Check the sharpness all the way from the tip to the heel of the blade.
After checking it, wash the blade before using it!
6. Are you afraid of sharpening your knife too frequently?
Let’s say you sharpen your knife once every 2 months.
If you do this,
In 10 years, the blade of the knife will be half an inch (1.4cm) shorter,
And the width of the blade will be 1/8 Inch (4mm) smaller.
That is in 10 years!
This tells you, you can use your knife for more than 20 years
7. When you feel a little bit of resistance from the knife, you should sharpen it
The reason why I suggest sharpening your knife before it gets completely dull is…
It is a lot easier to sharpen.
Let’s say the keenest is “100”.
It is better to sharpen at 90 or 80.
It will only take 3 minutes.
However:
When it goes down at 30, then you need to sharpen the dull knife for a long time.
