Thread: New kitchen knives

These are wonderful knives.
I find I do most all my sharpening on a Sharpmaker. It holds my angle well.

Yeah... the angle... to be honest, I know that thta is my biggest problem.
My potato peelers have blade faces that touch each other, so no secondary bevel.
This means the edge can be wicked sharp ven if honing technique is not perfect.

The wusthof -unfortunately- does not share this feature. It has the normal western style bevels, so honing technique makes a real difference.
I have gotten it to the point where it starts to bite my thumbnail, though not as decisive as my peelers.
I know I could use something like a sharpmaker, but that would be 'cheating'. I'd really like to take my freehanding to an acceptable level.

I just tried it on a cauliflower. Unfortunately, with this big knife, I only needed 2 cuts to get rid of the leaves, 1 cut to split it in halves, and then 2 cuts per half to cut out the heart.

After that I started to fine tune the edge with my limited skills, and I had to practice on the leaves.
So as I write this, the cutting board is full of confettie sized cauliflower remains. Good thing my wife is already off to bed, or she'd declare me nuts

Any way, next week it is my daughter's birthday and we have lots of guests coming over, staying for dinner. So I'll have lots and lots of cutting to do. I always liked cooking, but with good sharp knives, the preparation is almost as uch fun as the actual cooking.

Great knives. I have a large collection of Henkels Four Star but I really use a boning knife and the santoku which is similar to your Wusthof. It is just a great all around knife for slicing and chopping. I can demolish an onion in seconds.

My everyday "home" knives are in the works... I still have 2 more to get made ... decisions, decisions....

When I get a new knife to test out, I make salsa Lots of cutting and a treat at the end... well ok the next day (got to let it mingle the flavors )

Those are pretty sweet DC.

Are the bottom and top ones a lefties or double bevels?

Top.......Murray Carter - nakiri 180 in White (double bevel)
Middle...Watanabe - kaibou 210 in White (double bevel)
Bottom..Takeda - ajikiri 110 in AS (double bevel)

Looking at a Moritaka AS next, just don't have a style down yet...

I have a Watanabe KU ajikiri, T. Masamoto takohiki, and a yanagi that I forget the name of, all in right handed single bevel. I'm kind of likeing the single bevel stuff more and more. It's just hard finding them in a KU finnish...

Did some more cooking and slicing today.

First I steamed potatoes, and then sliced them in thin slices for making gratin. Wusthof ruled this one. The hollowing makes the wet slices easier to fall off. The shun sucked for this. The slices really sticked to it.

Slicing carrots went very well with the wusthof despite it not being razor sharp. With the right slicing technique it went effortless throug the carrots.

Then tonight I was preparing a cold salad for my wife to take to work, and I used the shun. It was like magic. the tomatoes, cucumber, paprika fell apart by the merest touch of the edge. And it is easy enough to handle that I can use it to peel paprikas.

My wife thinks it is funny. These days she says I just look around for things to slice. It is true. With good knives in my hand, slicing is magic.
But she doesn't mind. Her colleagues envy her for having a hubby that likes to cook.

EDIT: I just got off the phone with my mom. She asked me 'if I had given you such knives 15 years ago, would you have done all the slicing and cleaning?' I said yes and she said 'damn. if only I'd known...'
I have always been attracted to knives and sharp objects, but it didn't occur to either of us that a couple of Japanese knives would have saved her lots of hours every week.