It is important to take care of a kitchen knife since we use it continuously for any recipe that we are going to prepare. Also, if you know how to maintain and recover the edge, a good knife can be in the kitchen for a lifetime. That is why it is worth having good knives, but also knowing how to take care of them.

maintenance tips

Knives lose their sharpness little by little due to use (due to contact with food, both hard and soft), but there are also other acts that accelerate this wear. Therefore, there are several important tips to maximize the sharpness of your knives:

- Always use a suitable cutting surface : often, for convenience or speed, we cut small things on top of the kitchen marble. Big mistake! Marble is a very hard stone that damages the knife on contact. Always cut on a cutting board (you may be interested in seeing What cutting board to buy? to understand about the different types of wood and which ones are the most suitable).

- Do not accompany the food with the knife once cut; Instead, he opts to put down the knife and use a shovel, do it by hand or, another option, is to turn his wrist and accompany them with the knife, but with the part of the blade that does not cut.

- Avoid putting them in the dishwasher

- Always try to use the knife for the purpose for which it was made : do not cut meat with the vegetable knife, or vice versa; and don't use it to cut other things either.

- Store them properly : contact with the other utensils in the drawer damages them. Whenever you can, keep them separate - a knife block can help you to that end, apart from always having them at hand.

Wüsthof knife block and drawer block for the set of 3 Wüsthof knives

Knife sharpening

Over time, the blade wears down and loses its sharpness. There are three types of sharps that you may be interested in knowing:

Sharpened with steel :

Although not visible to the naked eye, the finest edge of the blade bends. The steel does not sharpen, but it helps you maintain that edge. That is why its use should be regular in our kitchen and it is in fact very simple to use:

- Keep the sharpener in the air with your arm still, or what is more comfortable, place it vertically downwards on the countertop. It must not move.

- Place the knife at an angle of 20º, and slide the knife along the sharpening steel maintaining that angle. We must pass the entire blade along the steel, starting with the side closest to the handle and ending with the tip of the knife.

- Repeat the process for both sides of the sheet repeatedly, the same number of times for each side to maintain the symmetry of the sheet. You should not exert force on it.

Honed with stone:

Each knife will have more or less sharpening needs. In the same way, there are different types of stones: coarse-grained stones for edges that are damaged, chipped or blunt, or finer-grained stones to go looking for more precise edges.

In the store we have two types of stones that Pallarès provides us, pink and green. Both are used for carbon steel knives (iron) and stainless steel knives, but the green stone , of artificial origin, is ideal for roughing and recovering the edge of quite worn or chipped knives with ease. For its part, the pink stone is a fine-grained natural stone whose origin is one of the best kept secrets of Pallarès, but the truth is that it works exceptionally well. It is without a doubt the best we have tasted. It serves both to recover the edge of a knife, as well as to make a fine sharpening of our knives.

In all cases, the sharpening method will be the same:

- During the sharpening process, always keep the stone moist so that it works correctly.

- We sharpen one side of the blade by sliding the blade over its center and to its end along the stone, moving it away from its body and attracting it back towards us.

- We turn the knife around and work the other side of the blade.

- It is important to always maintain the same angle of the blade on the stone (normally between 15º and 20º).

- Once the knife is sharp, we will clean the knife and the stone well with water.

Sharpened with a knife sharpener

Another very comfortable way to sharpen knives is with sharpeners. These have a slot through which to pass the knives, on each side of which there are some stones that help in sharpening. All you have to do is insert the knife straight and run it from the beginning of the blade to the tip several times, and the stones do the rest of the work, leaving the knives perfectly sharp.

In the store we have two sharpeners: one, the Kyocera sharpener , has ceramic stones ideal for restoring the edge to stainless steel knives. The second sharpener, found in the Wüsthof knife set , has two-phase sharpening: one, to return the edge to a completely dull knife (as if it were a hard stone); the second, for the finest sharpening.

Kyocera sharpener and knife set with Wüsthof sharpener , both for stainless steel knives