The moment I realized I'd been sharpening my kitchen knives wrong for 7 years

Last month I was prepping veggies for a big family dinner in Portland and my wrist was killing me. I blamed the cheap knife. Then my buddy who cooks professionally watched me work and just went quiet for a second. He said, "Are you using a pull-through sharpener?" I said yeah, been using one since 2018. He grabbed the knife, ran it across a whetstone he had in his trunk, and the next onion basically diced itself. Turns out pull-through sharpeners mess up the edge angle over time. I felt like an idiot but also relieved it wasn't my technique. Has anyone else had a cooking tool they used forever and then found out they were doing it totally backwards?

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1 Comment

sullivan.spencer21d ago

Ah man, I gotta disagree a little bit here. Pull-through sharpeners get a bad rap, but if you use a good one and don't drag it a million times, it's fine for most home cooks. Whetstones are great and all, but they're also a pain to deal with and easy to mess up if you don't know what you're doing.