The longevity and value of your kitchen knives are important, but safety is another reason to take good care of them. A sharp, well-kept knife with a comfortable, solid handle is safer to use and makes chopping faster than a blunt, damaged knife. Of course, if you invest a lot of money on a fine knife, you want it to last for many years, if not decades. Heck, with the right upkeep and care, even a $7 paring knife with a plastic handle may survive for a very long time. So let’s discuss the fundamentals of caring for and cleaning knives.
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How long do kitchen knives take to clean?
In order to keep your kitchen knives sharp and free of nicks and chips, we’ll be discussing both cleaning and maintaining them this week. Hand-washing and drying a knife takes roughly a minute. It takes 10 seconds to sharpen the edge of a steel or ceramic rod. To make your knives endure a long time, you must be consistent. Knife care is the daily maintenance of clean, dry, and protected knives.
Sharpen the kitchen knives regularly
Even the priciest knives that start out surgically sharp will eventually become dull since everything is subject to change. Hone the knife before each use or after a few to maintain its sharp edge. With a steel rod, honing is incredibly simple and quick to do. To make things even simpler, there are electronic kits available on the market.
Sharpening is a little more difficult, but it’s not impossible if you have some patience. Or, if you’re as lazy as I am, you can hire a pro to do it. The good news is that if you sharpen your knife frequently, you won’t even need to do it more frequently than once a year.
Wash the kitchen knives right after using
The majority of high-quality knives are constructed of high-carbon steel or stainless steel, which makes them less susceptible to rust than other materials. The blade will eventually be destroyed by the acid, water, and other chemicals from the meal, leaving behind black stains and rust if it is left filthy for an extended period of time after use. The simplest approach to avoid this is to immediately wash the blades after each use.
Even if a knife is dishwasher safe, hand washing is still preferable. The answer is straightforward: compared to a dishwasher, your hands are considerably gentler. The likelihood that a blade will be damaged while cleaning each knife individually with just mild soap and a cloth is incredibly slim.
Additionally, hand-washing the knives enables you to see whether any food or dirt is becoming lodged between the handle and the blade so that you can remove it right away.
Store kitchen knives properly
The greatest place for your knives to live is in a neat, reliable wood or bamboo block. The blades are first shielded from dirt by it. Additionally, it lessens collisions between the knives or between them and other kitchen items. Keeping your knives on a magnetic strip might be a good idea if you have a large collection and don’t enjoy having to take all of them out before you can find the right one. A magnetic strip is quite useful since it displays the blades so you can quickly identify which one you need. Even though it doesn’t provide much protection from dirt, it does hold the knives in position and keep them from slicing into one another.