For a long time, I thought the best way to care for kitchen knives was with those pull-through handheld knife sharpeners that look more like a clunky office accessory than a kitchen tool. That is, until I worked as a line cook in a restaurant, and the executive chef used a honing steel on his kitchen knives. He used it with lightning speed, swiping his German and Japanese knives up the steel at a 45-degree angle, finessing the blades to laser precision.
What’s the point of honing and sharpening your knives anyway? Over time, knives get duller. We know this. But how does honing your knives help? Do an experiment with me: place your palms together, with your fingers pointing upwards. Now, interlock your fingers and separate your palms, creating a triangle formation. See how your fingertips extend outwards? Think of that like dull metal. When knives show wear and tear, the blade becomes uneven, with microscopic changes to its shape that you can’t really see to the naked eye. When you run the blade against a honing steel, it’s essentially straightening those jagged edges (yes, in this case, your fingertips) to create a clean, straight line on both sides of the blade.
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