Thread: kitchen cutlery: meatpacker steel vs. leather?

its been my experience (working as a chef for several years when i left school) that using a steel isnt the same as stropping, it much more akin to using a pasted strop to hone the edge back. where as stropping just re alingns the edge.
the way a kitchen knife is used is completly diffrent to the way a razor is used, a knife is used to push through, where as a razor is "scraped along"
The force is always on the edge being pushed down into the chopping block. this will dull the edge much quicker.
the structure of kitchen knives differ aswell.
trying to hack through a chicken carcas with a blade as thin as a razor will damage the edge, so kitchen knives are thicker.

Most good chefs will have a selection of steels aswell as a hone stone, and use the correct steel according to the knife and how much repair work it needs doing, so while one of the much smoother fine steels would be used after light jobs such as shredding salad or such like.
a heavier steel would be used after jobs such as jointing meet, or even finly chopping herbs as the teqnique used for this is quite hard on the edge.

Or atleast that was the way i was taught and it has been a method that worked when i was a chef, and also in the construction industry, using the right method to sharpen the tools, depending on what the tool has been or is to be used for.

I used to work with a guy who had been a meat cutter. He told me that he used two types of steel to maintain an edge during the work day: smooth and shiny for beef and a steel which had been roughed up with sandpaper or soaked for a while in vinegar to give a knife a toothier edge for cutting pork.

The steels are used to maintain an edge, not unlike our razor strops, all of which are used for edge maintenance between honings. Steels work, are fast, and are easily cleaned. Large pluses when you are on a production line that insists upon cleanliness.

There is a BIG difference between cutting food and meat vs. beard hairs. The steel is the fastest way to realign the blade "fin". It does not sharpen the blade beyond its original level. Meat packers and chefs that cut into bone, fruit and vegetable seeds tend to bend the fin therefore dulling the effectiveness of the blade. The quickest way to restore this condition in a "SANITARY" way is with a harder steel that can be washed with soap and water in between uses. SR users have entirely different demands where the keenest edge is essential to success. And we are willing to take considerable care and time to achieve it. The chef and butcher just need the knife to be sharp enough for its intended use - right now. The steel works very nicely. In the right hands it can restore the fins to near perfect alignment, ready for the next use in less than 10 seconds.

Originally Posted by Johnny J

I've been watching a lot of Murray Carter videos and chefs' videos in an attempt to educate myself about the honing & maintenance of kitchen knives. (My GF so far is very pleased with the results). One thing still confuses me; the use of steel rods.

Most chefs seem to agree that butcher steel (the kind with grooves, or texture) is more destructive than helpful. They recommend using "meatpacker" or "slick" steel (smooth & polished) before each use of the knife.

So why do they use steel, while we use leather?

I happen to have a very hard, highly polished steel rod on hand. It seems to do the same thing that leather stropping does, but far more aggressively. I tried steeling one knife, and stropping another on a leather belt laid flat on the counter. The steel seems to produce a slightly "grabbier" edge. But the leather isn't half bad, either.

So why don't any chefs use leather instead of steel? Is the steel better? Or is there a fear that microbes from meat will end up contaminating the leather? Or is it an accident of history? Conversely, why don't we steel our razors instead of stropping them? (I'm actually afraid to try this for fear of chipping a blade--maybe that's the reason).

Should I look for another steel on ebay to keep at her house?

Generally, European style chef's knives are made of relatively soft steel that can be returned to a sharp condition by means of "plastic deformation". A razor is thinner, harder, more brittle steel and cannot be honed by these means and must be polished using leather and some compound. Attempting to "re-form" the edge of a razor with steel would just damage it. The reason not to use leather on a chef's knife is a combination of the fact that it is too slow on the thicker knife blade and it would not be a "food safe" process.

Idahone ceramic rods work very well for routine maintenance if you go with the finest one they make. It is aggressive enough to hone an edge with little effort (as long as you stay up on the apex) and leaves just enough microscopic "tooth" to the edge to get through the skins of things like tomatoes and peppers. I reserve the use of a meatpacking (smooth) steel for when I need an extremely fine slicing edge for cutting very soft foods with high precision.