Making sure that your kitchen knives are sharp is essential for more than efficiency and presentation. Chopping ingredients with dull knives is actually dangerous because it requires you to put more force behind your cuts, increasing the likelihood of the knives slipping and causing injury. That's why Daily Meal talked to Eric Rowse , lead chef-instructor of Culinary Arts at the Institute of Culinary Education 's Los Angeles campus, and Karl Frentz, digital marketing specialist at Tormek , to find out why certain sharpening tools just don't work for kitchen knives.
While there are many videos on the internet showing you how to sharpen knives with a rock, this method is better reserved for emergency or survival situations rather than for everyday kitchen utensils. "While this may add micro serrations to an edge and make it seem sharp, it is not for kitchen knives," Rowse explained in an email. "A random rock or stone is very different from a sharpening stone.
" While sharpening stones (whetstones) can be made from natural stones, they're cut from specific rocks to provide optimal results. With a random rock, on the other hand, you risk damaging your knives. Rowse and Frentz also said that some commercial tools aren't the best for sharpening kitchen knives.
They recommend avoiding high-RPM machines, roller sharpeners, pull-through devices, set angle sharpeners, and Dremel-style rotary grinders. High-RPM machines A high-RPM machine is a machine that operates at a high rotational .
