Yeah I sharpened a shit Ikea knife once. It was good for about 5 minutes. A quality knife holds an edge for a very long time. I use and mine daily and hone them about every other day, and feel the need to resharpen them maybe once every two months.
PSA: a honing steel does NOT sharpen a knife, it straightens the edge and should be used very gently.
Also, never buy knives in kits. First of all, these are shit 99% of the time. And second, when properly used, a chef’s knife is the only knife you’ll ever need.
My point is, in the context of a “cooking hack” perspective, if you’re about to spend 100€ to really up your prep game, spend it on an single, multipurpose, high quality knife instead of six or seven bad ones. There are good kits available, but good kits from reputable brands are super expensive, and you end up paying a lot for knives that won’t see much use.
You can buy a cheap cheese knife where the quality doesn’t matter as much for cheese platters and a decent paring knife later when you’ve mastered your chef’s knife and feel you sometimes need something smaller and more nimble.
But for the everyday cook, where all you need 99% of the time is to quickly and efficiently chop some vegetables, dice some onions and cut some protein, you don’t need anything more than a chef’s knife.
Yeah I sharpened a shit Ikea knife once. It was good for about 5 minutes. A quality knife holds an edge for a very long time. I use and mine daily and hone them about every other day, and feel the need to resharpen them maybe once every two months.
PSA: a honing steel does NOT sharpen a knife, it straightens the edge and should be used very gently.
Also, never buy knives in kits. First of all, these are shit 99% of the time. And second, when properly used, a chef’s knife is the only knife you’ll ever need.
Many knife kits come with very nice blocks to store your knives in, and the other sizes are worth having even if you only use them 1% of the time.
I can’t imagine serving a platter of cheese and crackers with a chef kife for example. And there are perfectly good knife sets available.
My point is, in the context of a “cooking hack” perspective, if you’re about to spend 100€ to really up your prep game, spend it on an single, multipurpose, high quality knife instead of six or seven bad ones. There are good kits available, but good kits from reputable brands are super expensive, and you end up paying a lot for knives that won’t see much use.
You can buy a cheap cheese knife where the quality doesn’t matter as much for cheese platters and a decent paring knife later when you’ve mastered your chef’s knife and feel you sometimes need something smaller and more nimble.
But for the everyday cook, where all you need 99% of the time is to quickly and efficiently chop some vegetables, dice some onions and cut some protein, you don’t need anything more than a chef’s knife.