The Best Way To Sharpen & Clean Knives (And The Worst)

I'm Frank Proto, I'm a professional chef

and a culinary instructor.

And this is everything you need to know

about taking care of and sharpening your knives.

I did it.

[laughs]

I am a fruit ninja.

I'm gonna show you different methods

on how to sharpen your knives,

maintain them and how to be safe while you use them.

This is knife care 101.

Grandma might have sharpened her knives

by rubbing two knives together.

It doesn't work.

I'm gonna show you the right way.

Chefs are always focused on having sharp knives

because dull knives are a danger in the kitchen.

Dull knives take more pressure to cut with more of a chance

you're gonna slip and hurt yourself.

A sharp knife gives you precision cuts

that lets your food cook evenly.

Taking about 20 minutes every few months

to sharpen your knives makes all the difference.

Let's get into how we maintain them.

The way that I test the knife to see if it's sharp,

is I turn it over,

I take my thumb and I run it over the blade lightly.

And what you'll feel is it drags on your fingerprint, right?

You can feel that there's a little bit of a tug

on your finger.

If your knife was dull, it would feel like

you're running over kind of like a nice, smooth bump.

With things like scallions,

you can actually hear a sharp knife, right?

You barely hear a whisper when I cut.

With a dull knife, though, it makes a much louder noise.

Cause it's crushing the scallion and then cutting it.

You can also see that there's a lot more moisture

on my board when I use the dull knife.

Whereas the sharp knife, no moisture.

You can see that I have to put

a fair amount of pressure on it and you can see

that I'm getting tearing when I cut.

So we're crushing our food rather than slicing it.

And that's not what we want.

With a sharp knife, you see how thin we can cut.

If it was a dull knife,

you would not get that beautiful paper thin slice.

It's like a whisper.

It's like a whisper.

My favorite way to sharpen knives is by hand

with a Water stone.

There are other types of stones.

There's an Oil stone and a Water stone.

With an Oil stone, you need to buy a mineral oil

that won't go bad or rancid.

It's sticky.

They get gummy.

I find the Water stone is the easiest to maintain.

All I need is some cool water.

First thing I like to do with the Water stone

is soak it, right?

Generally, I like to soak my Water stone

for about 30 minutes.

Just put it in water.

You'll see there's lots of bubbles.

And that basically means that the Water Stone

is absorbing some water.

We soak the stone and it keeps our knife cool and lubricated

when we're sharpening,

I know my Water Stone is ready to use

when I stop seeing lots of bubbles.

And this looks like it's soaked pretty well.

This stone has two grits on it.

It has a 6,000 and a 1,000,

1,000 being a rougher grit,

6,000 being super smooth.

I always start with the rougher grit

because that's gonna basically give our blade shape

and define our blade.

Whereas the higher grit

is gonna going to give it that nice sharp edge.

I like to put my stone in front of me facing away from me.

A lot of times, this is slippery.

What you can do is you can use a wet towel underneath

to keep this from sliding.

This little piece is a guide.

This slides onto the back of the knife

and it gives you a really good angle for your knife

that's probably more like a 17 or 18 degree angle.

The problem I have with these guides

is that I could lose this.

This can end up in the trash, right?

This ends up in the trash and then what do I do?

If you're just beginning,

by all means, use the guide.

But as a professional, I like to do it without the guide.

So let's go.

This is basically a 90 degree angle to the stone.

We cut that in half, it's a 45 degree angle.

And then in half again, it's about 22 and a half.

It's not the angle for every knife.

This is just how I teach it to get a really good result.

And I like to just make sure

that my stone stays a little wet.

I'm gonna start with that angle.

And I'm using my right hand to push down.

I'm using my fingers to push down as well.

I'm putting about three to four pounds of pressure on this.

How do I know it's three to four pounds of pressure?

I know what it feels like.

I've been doing this for years, but if you don't know,

you can always get a scale and push down and feel

what three or four pounds of pressure feels like.

Start at the tip, push the knife away from me,

turn it over and pull the knife towards me.

So there's a little bit of particles on the sharpener

and that's basically just the knife kind of being worn away.

Anytime I start to see them,

I'm gonna add a little more water

and I'm gonna go back into it.

And I'm gonna use this side

until I start to get a nice sharp blade.

And once I can start to feel that it's getting sharp,

that's when I'm gonna turn it over

and go to the finer grit.

It doesn't have to take a long time, right?

And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this stone

and we're gonna turn it over.

And now I'm gonna go on the fine side

and do the same thing.

Make sure you make a mess.

It's starting to feel good.

I can feel that I'm getting that nice sharp edge.

Do I look like a maniac when I do this?

The method that I choose to sharpen my knives.

I give it a five out of five.

It definitely takes a little bit of skill and practice,

but it's well worth it.

All I'm gonna do now is run it over a steel

just to hone that edge.

And I think we're good to go.

This piece of equipment is not a knife sharpener.

We call it a honing steel it's for honing.

Whenever I'm prepping every 10, 15 minutes,

run my knife over the steel, put it back.

It's part of my kit.

Basically what this does is it takes your blade

and keeps your blade tuned up between sharpenings, right?

You could take a dull blade

and run it over this honing steel for a month

and it's not gonna make it sharper.

But what it does do is it takes our blade

that's fairly sharp and it tunes it up.

Your blade has like micro serrations

and they kind of get a little twisted occasionally.

And when you run it over the steel,

it lines them up again and keeps your blade sharp.

The way that I use the honing steel

is I'm basically starting at the same angle

that I sharpen with.

And I start at the bottom of the knife with a bolster.

I'm gonna run it over and down, over and down.

And basically I'm just gonna run it over

until I feel that that edge is nice and sharp, right?

Some people don't want to cut towards themselves

or hone towards themselves.

You can go like this away from you.

Or some people will actually put on the table

so they can hone straight down.

I find that serrated knives are really hard to sharpen.

I'm not sure people even sharpen their serrated knives.

When I was a cook, I use this knife a lot

and basically when it got dull,

I would probably recycle it.

But what I do when I'm using serrated knives

is while they're sharp,

I tend to hone them a little bit more.

And basically what I do is I get in between the serrations

and I just kinda run my knife at that angle

that I sharpen at.

And then on the flat side,

I'm just gonna run my flat side over, right?

This doesn't sharpen the knife,

but it does keep it in tune.

On the Franco meter, honing is super important.

It's a five out of five.

Let's move on to other methods that I prefer a lot less.

This is a manual sharpener.

And basically what this has is two ceramic or metal blades

in it that you drag your knife through.

And I tend to use this with knives

that aren't really expensive

in order to use the manual sharpener.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hold it firmly.

It has kind of sticky things here.

There's a course and a fine.

And what I'm gonna do

is I'm gonna hold it straight up and down

and drag it across.

Now, what I find is this,

if you can see I'm getting metal shavings, right?

Which I don't really want in my food,

metal shavings do not equal food.

And this is why I don't use it with my good knives,

because basically what this is doing

is it's shaving the metal down to get it sharp.

So if you have a knife that's kind of not super expensive,

drag it straight across a couple of times,

go from the course to the fine.

It also is very noisy and kind of like gives you the shivers

and it gives you an okay sharpness.

But whenever I use this method,

I'm constantly going back and resharpening,

it's not a lasting sharpness.

So on the Franco meter scale of one to five,

I kind of give this, I don't know, maybe a two.

I just don't think that this is the best way

to maintain your knives properly.

Another option is one of these do hickies [laughs].

This is an electric sharpener.

It has two abrasive wheels in it.

You know, anytime we get into abrasives

that are moving really fast,

I get a little worried that the knife's gonna get heated up

and lose some of that temper.

What temper is is they heat treat the knife

and they're heat treated to keep them not only flexible,

but also for them to hold their edge really well.

So this, I feel it might heat it up

and that's why I kind of stay away from them.

This little machine, there's two sides.

There's the left side and the right side, you turn it on.

And all you do is start at the bottom,

pull it through.

And this model will shut off when it's ready it says.

The sound is horrible.

It's kind of like, you know,

giving me a little chills up my spine.

This is like a Mad Max orchestra right here, right?

That's what Dubstep sounds like?

If that's what Dubstep sounds like I don't like it.

These old ears don't like the Dubstep.

Once it goes down to low,

they say to run it through the honer.

I don't know what that does.

It sounds to me like it's just dulling the knife,

not my favorite thing on a Franco meter,

this is basically a one as far as I'm concerned.

If I can give it a zero, I'd give it a zero.

Maybe I'm gonna give it a zero.

If someone put my good knives through this,

we might have a problem.

Don't come to my house and do that,

I don't want to go to jail.

Here's a method that I've seen in a lot of restaurants.

I've seen cooks do this,

and it's not necessarily sharpening the knife,

but it's kind of giving it a nice hone.

So I'm looking to use that unglazed portion of the plate.

So if the whole thing is glazed, it's not gonna work.

And that's what you're gonna do.

It's kind of like one of those methods

that it might work for you, it might not.

This knife is pretty sharp.

I feel like it's honing it pretty good.

I'd say this is probably a 6,000 grit.

And I can feel that the knife

is just getting a little sharper.

On the Franco meter, I'm gonna give this a three,

three and a half.

Now that you know how to sharpen the knives.

Let's talk about proper use and cleaning.

Part of taking care of the knives is using the right tool

for the right job.

I would never get a chef knife

and try and peel something with it.

Not only is it inefficient, it's dangerous.

You never really wanna take a chef knife like this.

That's got a nice, fine blade and like open a can with it

or try and chop bones with it.

That's why we have cleavers and can openers.

The other important consideration with knives

are the type of materials you're cutting on, right?

I've seen like old grandmothers have glass cutting boards

and you never want to use a hard surface.

You always want to use either a plastic, a rubber,

a bamboo or wooden cutting board

when you're cutting your food.

If you use a hard surface like metal or glass,

it definitely dulls your knife

and you'll have to sharpen it more often.

Another quick tip to keep yourself safe is this,

get yourself a wet paper towel,

put it onto your cutting board

and it'll stop your cutting board from sliding.

So you can see the bottom cutting board

doesn't have the towel, but the top board

is really firm 'cause it has the towel under it.

Another important step in maintaining your knives

is cleaning them properly.

A couple of things that are no nos, right?

I do not put my knives in a dishwasher,

putting your knives in the dishwasher

heats them past a critical point.

It ruins the temper of the knives

and the knives will not hold an edge.

The other thing that I do as far as safety is

I never put a knife into a sudsy sink.

If I put this in the bottom of this bowl with all the suds,

I can't see it.

And if I walk away and someone reaches into that sink,

they're gonna get cut.

So knives always get put on the side and are cleaned by hand

and put away immediately.

This is how I like to clean my knives.

I have some warm, soapy water here.

I get a sponge.

Sponge goes in the water.

I get my knife.

I'm holding it away from me.

What I like to do is not run along the blade

'cause this will cut through a sponge.

I like to run the top of the blade, right?

Or I like to go on the sides,

but I'm always paying attention and being very focused

when I do this, right?

I dry my knives as soon as I washed them.

So they don't get rusted or stained.

Look at that, it's gorgeous.

Our knives are clean and dry.

The last step for maintenance is how we store our knives.

The way you store your knives is really important

in the maintenance of them.

If you store them improperly,

they'd get dented and dinged

and they will lose their edge really quickly.

If you put them in a drawer,

they're gonna clatter around and beat each other up.

And you'll end up with chips and dents and dull knives.

Two of the ways that I like to store knives,

the block.

Generally, I don't have a block in my house

just for the fact that it takes up a lot of counter space.

But if you want to store knives efficiently,

a block works really well.

They're easy to get to.

The other way that you can store them

is on a magnetic strip.

These hang on the wall, the knives stick to them,

keeping the blade safe and away,

they're not banging into each other

and they stay nice and sharp.

As a chef, we're always on the go.

And when we take our knives with us,

we use a knife roll and this is my knife roll.

It is heavy duty canvas with kind of a plastic interior.

And I have all my knives here.

They're stored in individual pockets.

So they don't bang against each other.

It's compact, it's easy.

It's a quick grab and go when you're on the move.

I hope you learned how to be safe,

keep your the knife sharp

and maintain your fruit ninja status.

I want you to remember dull knives are dangerous knives,

dull knives suck.

Keep your knives sharp or I'm coming to your house

and I'll sharpen them for you.

People are gonna call me on that one [laughs].