How Often You Should Sharpen Your Cooking Knives

Posted: Feb 06, 2012 |Comments: 0 |

Many people wonder about how often they should sharpen their knives. Well, let me rephrase that, people whom actually take care of their cutlery often ask themselves how frequently sharpen their knives. To try and answer this question you must first asses the amount of times you use your knife in a six month period. The majority of knives that are purchased globally are used in home kitchen setting, followed by professional kitchen knives, and then finally knives used for sport. Typically home kitchen knives are used daily for about 45 minutes or less each day. While professional kitchen knives are used much more frequently at about 6 hours a day. Sporting knives are used much less so they can be labeled as occasional usage.

Of course there are other considerations you must take into place such as the type of sharpener used. Many skilled chefs and frequent knife users use the traditional, water stone and leather strop combination to get their blades into their best edge. Unfortunately for this method, you must have the skills to be able to do this. When you use this method the blade can last for a decent amount of time, but it doesn't compare to an electric knife sharpener. This is because many professional grade sharpeners can give you an edge that is even sharper than razor sharp. For example the three stage diamond hone knife sharpener by Chef's Choice gives you an edge they call a Trizor edge.  Another method used is a ceramic or stone rod, similar to a water stone. This is a good way to sharpen your knives, the only problem is getting the angle on the blade sharpened at the right angle. You need some good skills to find the right angle and keep it there while sliding the edge on a rod. With an electric knife sharpener, your blade is set at the right angle for you and kept there, giving you the sharpest edge possible.

So an electric knife sharpener is the best because it gives you a sharper edge. So to give you a rough estimate of how often to sharpen your knives, we'll be talking about a knife sharpened by an electric knife sharpener. So to get onto answering the questions, most will agree that with moderate usage of home kitchen knives you only have to sharpen them two to three times a year, mainly once every six months. For professional kitchen knives used in a heavy duty setting, sharpening becomes more frequent and once a month or even once every two weeks. For sporting knives, sharpening will be rare, if you only use the knife a handful of times each year then you won't have to sharpen it at all in an entire year.

These are only rough estimates and should give you a basic idea of how many times you should sharpen your knives each year. Sharpening schedules vary from person to person but if you know that you don't put your knives through extensive cutting for extended periods of time, then you should be safe having to cut them only twice a year. 

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