Professionals use whetstones with a grit of 400-6000 to sharpen their knives. How do chefs sharpen their knives? Most chefs use whetstones to sharpen their knives.
The Best Knife Sharpener
We liked the Chef'sChoice 1520 for its performance and angle versatility, so now it's a pick alongside the Trizor 15XV. We also weigh in on rolling knife sharpeners. For cooks, there are few things in the kitchen that are more frustrating—or dangerous—than dull knives.
Sharpening steels, stones and whetstones are great for home chefs who only occasionally sharpen their blades, and butchers who sharpen one or two knives regularly. But, if you're a commercial butcher who uses multiple knives on a regular basis, an electric knife sharpener is often best for the job.
A sharpening stone, also known as a whetstone is a kitchen essential used by professional chefs across the globe.
For chef's knives, opt for a whetstone or electric knife sharpening tool.
The whetstone is pretty popular and classically what many chefs use. It's compressed sandstone. You soak it in water and start with the lower grit to shave off the blade and then you smooth it out with the higher grit side.
Electric pull through sharpeners remove way too much metal and shorten the life of your knife by years. Ceramic wheel sharpeners tend to take chips and chunks out of thin Japanese blades. Because of the mechanics of use, it is impossible to apply the same amount of pressure throughout the blade.
Using whetstones is a skill you can learn. Once you've understood a few principals and put in a little practice, whetstones can provide you with amazingly sharp knives forever. They give the best results of all methods of sharpening.
A 17 to 20 degree angle covers most kitchen knives, pocket knives, and outdoor knives. Some knives (typically Japanese manufacturers) will sharpen their knives to roughly 17 degrees. Most western knives are roughly 20 degrees. In fact, a 20 degrees angle is often considered the best sharing point for most knives.
Pull-through sharpeners are the most popular way to sharpen knives, and with good reason: They are quicker than whetstones and more precise than sharpening steels. However, they shed the most amount of metal, which weakens the durability of knives.
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As for rubbing knives together, that's purely for show. It might sharpen slightly, like using the bottom of a ceramic cup, but it's not effective.
Fine Blade Angle
The sharpness of a chef's knife is also attributed to its blade angle. Chef's knives typically have a thinner edge angle, ranging between 15 to 20 degrees per side. This design creates an ultra-sharp edge.
It's just some, like ceremic knives, are hard and brittle and need special equipment to sharpen them, like diamond Lapping. Ceremic blades are harder than normal honing stones, so, will not make any sharpening effort. However, pretend rubber knives are only for show and definitely cannot be sharpened.
Your pull through knife sharpener becomes rounded out
That's good. However, in the same motion smaller bits of of the sharpener scrape off too. Over time your sharpener becomes a "rounder" tool. The groove at the very tip of the sharpener wears and rounds out.
We recommend 6–8 pulls through the sharpener (tip up). If you need that extra degree of sharpness, polish the edge with a few strokes back and forth.
Michael Murdy, the food scientist and chef behind Robust Kitchen, always recommends Chef'sChoice and loves the 15XV in particular because “[it's] a more advanced model with features such as three-stage sharpening and a diamond wheel.” The big advantage the 15XV has over the 1520 above is its third and final step, using ...
Chef'sChoice 1520 Professional Electric Knife Sharpener
Garten and I like Chef'sChoice, which won Best Electric Sharpener in our knife sharpener tests because it is superior to other methods. It gave us the finest and sharpest edge of any of the 42 knife sharpeners we tested.
Professional chefs use various methods, such as whetstones, honing rods, and electric sharpeners, to maintain their blades.
Never expose your fingers to the blade. Pay attention to the knife blade, and where the edge of the blade is at all times. Don't forget the three finger rule when slicing: one in front (your middle) and two behind (your index finger and ring finger). For more, check out Gordon Ramsay's list of essential kitchen knives.
In the end, knives sharpened using these rolling sharpeners bore inconsistent results, both when they were slicing through tomatoes and when they were tested with an Edge-On-Up sharpness tool.