How to take care of your best knives, and common mistakes that are ruining them

Have you ever tried cutting a pumpkin with a bread and butter knife? You’d be advised not to. The result the majority of the time is a knife stuck in the flesh of the pumpkin.

Incorrectly using a knife for the wrong task is one of the most common ways to ruin it, says Shannon Fryer, operations manager at House of Knives.

“A paring knife should be used for trimming, topping and tailing, not for opening a packet of bacon.”

If you’re investing in a knife set, Fryer recommends starting with four basic knives. A cook’s knife, the most common knife for kitchen use, cuts anything from herbs to pumpkins and should be the main knife in your set. A paring knife is for the smaller items; a carving knife is ideal for hot and cold meats (not for heavy vegetables) and a pastry knife should be used for breads, doughs and sponges.

Dishwashers are another enemy of knives. “Companies will claim that their knives are dishwasher safe, but in reality they’re not going to last as long if they’re always put in the dishwasher,” Fryer says.

The detergents can be abrasive and the movement of the dishwasher can give the blade chips. The best solution is to wash your knife in warm soapy water and dry with a soft cloth before putting it in storage straight away.

“I once left one of my Japanese knives out on the bench to dry overnight and in the morning it had rusted,” Fryer says. “Japanese knives are more vulnerable however, a German knife is a lot stronger at resisting corrosion.”

Owner of House of Knives John Fryer says people often store their knives in the cutlery drawer

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This is a big no-no as the blades will bang together and chip. Only store knives in drawers if the knives have a blade guard or if the draw has a liner (a plastic insert with cuts in it to hold the knives still).

“There’s no one correct method to store knives but the goal is the same – to protect the edges and afford a degree of safety to those around,” he says.

A common storage solution is a knife block, which is particularly good for renters who aren’t allowed to drill holes in the wall for a metal knife rack. Wooden blocks limit the type of knives to store, so Shannon suggests a magnetic knife block.

Another important piece of knife-care advice is to make sure that your knives are kept sharp. A dull knife is a dangerous knife. “It’s a fairly common saying,” Shannon Fryer says, “the more pressure you have to apply, the more likely the knife is going to slip, and a blunt knife wound will take longer to heal than a sharp knife wound.”

A knife steel is wrongly assumed to be used to sharpen a knife. It’s purpose is only to realign the the knife’s blade. “Use a steel after every time you use the knife,” he says, ” if you do this you should only have to actually sharpen the blade every 18 months.”

To sharpen, use a stone or a professional sharpener, “I’m not a fan of the pull-through sharpeners, they don’t actually sharpen a blade properly,” he says.

A good set of knives should last between 20 and 30 years. But only if they’re looked after – which means using a wooden chopping board, regularly using a steel, only sharpening your knives when they need to be sharpened, storing knives correctly and keeping them out of the dishwasher.

– stuff.co.nz