Knives
When you buy your knives you want to get high carbon steel or high carbon stainless steel.
The high carbon steel will end up looking splotchy but they sharpen GREAT and hold their edge the best.
If you're a stickler about having stainless steel, get high carbon stainless. They'll stay pretty looking for you and sharpen easily.
Stainless steel knives that are not high carbon you might as well throw away when the edge gets bad. They are next to impossible to sharpen, and you have to sharpen them often.
Ideally you don't want to sharpen your knives very often because you remove steel every time you do.
What you do want to do is run it on a GOOD steel. It won't remove the steel like when you sharpen it but it will straighten the edges.
You'll be surprised how wonderfully this works.
Every time you go to use your knives you should VERY carefully check the edge with your fingers, you DON'T want to get cut.
To do this hold, the steel at about your belly button to the blade. Starting at the tip run the knife down the front and then down the back.
This way you get both sides of the knife. Do this 3 or 4 times, then you're done.
If I'm doing ALOT of cutting or chopping sometimes I'll have to stop and clean the knife and run it on the steel again then I get back to
work.
In taking care of your knives one IMPORTANT thing to remember is to be careful of the surfaces you use them on.
For instance you don't want to cut on a tile, granite, or marble countertop, by doing so you not only make your knives dull but you can
actually ruin (flatten or bend) the edge of your knives.
A wood or plastic cutting board is the better choice over tile or granite.
We all know that good knives can be very costly so it's to our advantage to take care of them
NOTE:
Those of you that are afraid of sharp knives shouldn't be. Yes, they are sharp and as with anything that's sharp you need to be careful
but the fact is more people get cut with dull knives than with sharp ones. Why? Because they have to use more pressure to make the
cuts and end up cutting themselves because the food moves from the pressure and instead they get their hand or fingers, and get cut
sometimes very severely. With a sharp knife you don't use much pressure and have a lot less accidents and stitches.