welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen we're here again with gage from
sharp knife shop in Hamilton sir today we just want to talk about knife
maintenance yep so there's a difference between carbon steel and stainless steel
yes we touched on that hopefully you guys been watching through the videos
already two main differences stainless steel will never rust people put that to
the test you can definitely still rust a stainless steel knife takes a lot more
to rust a stainless steel knife than it does a carbon steel knife which requires
you to keep it wiped down clean and dry at all times but you should be doing
that anyway so as pretty much after every operation although you don't see
it because I usually edit it out I'm I will be you know wiping off my knife
yeah every time yeah important doesn't matter if it's stainless or carbon and
good habit to have keeping things clean and yeah in order yeah yeah so that's I
mean you should be doing that in a regardless of what knife you you are
buying but stainless is easier to maintain and that absolutely yep yep so
and again not to scare anyone away from carbon steel there are great advantages
of carbon steel it's a lot of fun to work with but be aware that you do have
to be more diligent making sure it stays clean and dry develop that habit of
before the knife goes down on your board after use gets a quick wipe that's all
it needs to happen okay so that's after use before use before you use the steel
the steel so this is a hot topic I am so I'll be completely honest with
you I'm not a huge proponent of the of the honing rod or the steel as it's
called whether or not it's made from the ceramic material or just a traditional
steel rod or for instance we were taking a look at your diamond rod here so this
is diamond impregnated yes a personal opinion I absolutely hate it
yes I've heard that before I know a lot of people that swear by these and I know
a lot of people that absolutely hate them I'm a little bit indifferent I I
think that whatever works for you works for you so just as it's a bit of a segue
you pull out at random one of the knives and I don't know if you're gonna be able
to see this on the camera I'll try to get a close-up but you can see where
I've kind of screwed it up definitely not the worst I've ever seen but these
diamond Steel's definitely remove from your knife and if you're not very
Kaushal to get the entire length of your blade every stroke you're going to
affect the the profile or the curvature of your blade which isn't what a steel
is supposed to do it's just supposed to realign the burr
exactly so that's a great point the the difference between sharpening a knife
and honing your knife is one that I think is is not apparent to a lot of
people so in my mind honing a knife means to simply realign an existing edge
we're not removing any material as we use our knife the the edge is going to
fold over one way or the other causing it to feel dull and by realigning our
edge we're making it feel sharp again over time though as we continue to do
that fold our edge over through use and then realign it it's going to break off
little pieces of the edge and eventually we're going to end up with a rounded
edge like this at which point we will need to remove material from our knife
to sharpen it again which our sharpening and that that's sharpening so I love the
the ceramic rod if you are going to use a honing rod I highly recommend the
ceramic ones especially for Japanese knives with those more refined and and
and sort of gentle edges okay those diamond rods and the normal sort of
German style honing rod it's almost like an arranged a little bit looks like
corduroy yeah I finally I do more damage to your next and they then they do good
so if it's all you have just be very gentle you don't need to Gordon Ramsay
it and and go nuts on your on your knife with your honing rod and you don't need
to do it before every use you know I was taught in the kitchen do things with
purpose and if it if it needs to get done
do it properly you're not just there to have it don't just do it because you
think ok I need to do it right so you know for me if if I can't get my edge
back with you know like ten strokes on each side I know it's time to go that's
definitely time to sharpen ok I would say normally if you can't get your knife
back with you know four to five swipes on each side then it's it's probably
time to it at least just touch them up on the stones real quick ok
can show us a little bit about the technique yeah for sure so again I am
I'm a big proponent of doing things the way that feels comfortable to you okay
so I'll start by showing you how I hold a knife and what feels comfortable to me
so I hold it straight out like this and I so I'll talk briefly about how
you're gonna find your angle for me it's very natural I've done it a hundred
thousand times so I know what the angle feels like if you're doing this for the
first time I would recommend you just hold this the steel or the rod straight
up and down put it right down straight up and down on a surface you know that
this is 90 degrees you can therefore figure out what 90 degrees is in
relation to your knife you can humans work very good in halves so if we know
that this is 90 I can have that 245 I can have that again 222 and a half if
you're using a German style knife 22 and a half is where about you want to be and
then with Japanese knives I'm going to be a little bit flatter to the rod sort
of around here and again if you're first starting out I recommend just leaving
the knife or the rod straight down on the board and just pulling the knife
towards you so you're pulling towards you and okay and going and going down at
the same time right and like I said speed is almost bad for this process
unless you get good at it and you're comfortable doing it what you're really
focused on is maintaining your angle maintaining your hand pressure and
making sure you get the entire length of the blade in every stroke and like I
said we don't need to do a ton of this a few strokes like that should be all
that's required and then we just want to test our knife make sure there's no
burrs or any sort of like little bits of Steel coming off either side if you feel
one side of the edge has a little bit scratchiness on it a couple more strokes
on the rod very gently just to get it realigned properly and then you should
be good to go so that hole not important right like so and I said I was gonna
show you all the quality you know quality over quantity for sure 100% so
when you're starting out I do find this a little bit awkward but it gives you an
opportunity to sort of understand the process as you are me personally I find
holding the the rod sort of in my gut here like this and moving away from
myself like this is how I feel most comfortable I know a lot of guys that
prefer to use this motion like so yep
whatever whatever method you choose quality over quantity consistency are
key and and and comfort and comfort yes so once you've once you figure out what
your comfort level is take it easy yeah do it slowly yeah purpose exactly
don't have to do it every time no okay so thanks for that that is very helpful
and you want to come on back and show us how to actually can't wait okay yeah
fantastic thanks for stopping by see you again soon so today we're going
to talk a little bit about choosing the equipment you need to sharpen your knife
mm-hmm so there's some decisions to be made before you even get to the point of
sharpening absolutely
you