How to care for your knives

Once you have your knives sharpened by the Help My Knife professional knife sharpener at the Camellia City Market, you may be wondering how to keep them nice and sharp. Here is the advice provided by WikiHow.

A properly cared for kitchen knife will last for years and provide a prefect cut every time. It is wise to have them sharpened a few times a year.

STEPS
1. Find a good place to keep your knives. Suitable places would be in a knife block or in a drawer (but only if they are in a sheath, as the knives could be damaged otherwise).

2. Clean your knives after each use. For knives that are supposed to be hand washed, take a soapy cloth and gently scrub the knife, then wash it off with warm water. Afterwards, use a paper towel to dry it off.

3. Keep your knives dry. For example, if you have a carbon steel kitchen knife, it can be rusting even if it does not appear to be doing so.

4. Steel your knives regularly. A knife's edge has a tendency to roll towards either side of the edge, and decrease cutting power. To steel a blade, hold the knife flat against a surface and slide it along, gradually raising the back of the blade until it JUST begins to cut into the surface. From there, take your steel in one hand, and hold the back corner of the knife's edge to the end of the steel closest to you. "Sweep" the blade towards the tip of the steel, making sure that all of the length of the blade comes in contact with the steel. Do this ten times for each side of the blade.

5. The most common cause of wear of the cutting edge of a knife is due to contact with the cutting board surface. Boards made of glass, ceramic, marble etc are completely useless, they damage the cutting edge in the first cut. Wooden and plastic boards are better and have a much lower dulling effect. For the best result use very soft disposable paper or card cutting board.( based on research by CATRA, the Worlds Cutting Technology Organization)

TIPS
•If you wash your knives in the dishwasher, carefully place them in a way that they can not bang around during the cycle. Otherwise, the blades could be damaged.

•Note: Avoid putting higher end knives in the dishwasher, some detergents will have a detrimental effect on tempered or damascus steel blades.In fact it is not the detergents that damage the knives, but the corrosive attack of salt from food, the water and the hot atmosphere, in general detergents are corrosion inhibiting.

•If you have to store your knives in a drawer, make paper sheathes for them by taking a piece of heavy paper or cardboard, folding it over the knife, and taping it.

•Use the right knife for the right purpose. A fillet knife might be damaged if you try to cut bones with it, and filleting a fish with a butter knife would take forever.

hattip: WikiHow