Kitchen Knives

[Jim Becker]

One bad habit many people have is to scrape things from the cutting board into a pot. This is okay if one uses the back of the knife. Many people use the cutting edge as for scraping which tends to dull it quicker.

I actually do this, but with my Nakiri, which is wide, flat and thin, it hasn't been an issue. The cutting board is wood and the angle is nearly flat..it's not so much scraping as sliding it under the cut/chopped veggies and scooping them up. Perhaps it's the specific knife, but it stays sharper than any other knife in the drawer outside of my Zwilling prep knife.

[Jim Koepke]

I actually do this, but with my Nakiri, which is wide, flat and thin, it hasn't been an issue. The cutting board is wood and the angle is nearly flat..it's not so much scraping as sliding it under the cut/chopped veggies and scooping them up. Perhaps it's the specific knife, but it stays sharper than any other knife in the drawer outside of my Zwilling prep knife.

More likely the method is what spares the edge since it isn't being dragged across the board.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Do you do a lot of cooking?

My method is not to sharpen kitchen knives.

If I sharpened them to the fine edge that professional cooks advocate then I'd get some bad cuts. Since I don't prepare a lot of food or need to do it quickly, it's satisfactory for me to let the knives get somewhat dull and use a little extra pressure and time.

This is part of why a dull knife can be more dangerous than a sharp knife. More pressure is needed and a dull knife is likely to slip off of what is intended to be cut. A sharp knife is less likely to slip across a surface as it will penetrate where it is placed on an item.

jtk

[Pat Barry]

I agree with Jim. A sharp blades cuts what you want to cut with much less effort. Needing high effort leads to mistakes and injuries. I think you should re-assess your methods of cutting.