Stop Chipping & Dulling Your Knife's Edge. Here's How.

Name: The Chef’s Knife
Brand: Artisan Revere
SKU: Chef-Blu-Mahog-86
Price: 445.0 USD
Availability: InStock

3 MINUTE READ

BY: DAVID OLKOVETSKY

In a recent edition, we discussed foods and materials to avoid, to help us keep our knives in great condition. As a refresher, we talked about bones, frozen foods, and champagne bottles. In this edition, we’re going to teach you how to use your knife, cutting board, and other tools properly, so your edge lasts longer.

There are a few basic principles:

When cutting foods, don’t use too much force while chopping
Make sure you're using a sharp knife
Support from your non-dominant hand when mincing herbs, should not be too aggressive
Don’t scrape and scoop with your knife’s edge
Avoid really hard and dense foods, like bones, squash, and frozen item

Let’s dive into detail.

Section 1: Stop cutting so aggressively

Section 2: Don't scrape with your knife's edge

Section 3: Use the right tool for the job.

Stop Cutting So Aggressively

With a thin, sharp knife, use less force.

Less is More, at least when it comes to Force. Using aggressive chopping or rocking force when cutting is a bad habit many cooks develop. This often comes about due to repeated use of dull knives with soft Rockwell steels.

We always remind our customers that geometry cuts. This is a fancy way of saying that a knife that is thick behind the edge (cuts poorly), that hasn’t been sharpened for an extensive period will require the cook wielding the blade to use large amounts of pressure to get through foods. This is dangerous! Slips can happen quite easily. It’s not just a safety concern, as it builds the bad habit of using far too much force when you finally do have a razor-sharp blade, like the Artisan Revere chef’s knife. With a thin, sharp knife, use less force.

Grip Matters.

When cutting most foods, you want your dominant hand holding the knife by the handle. The grip should be about medium handshake firmness—not so firm that you’re about to break the knife handle in half, and not so loose that you have no control. A pinch grip is best for most cuts, though there are plenty of times for a pointing grip.

If you’re mincing herbs, and you’re placing your support hand on the spine of the blade, remember it’s only there to help you control the knife, and not to pry the cutting board apart. Keep these cuts nice and easy.

Don't Scrape With Your Knife's Edge

We often see professionals and home cooks with a bit of training follow this pattern: cut the food, scrape the food into their waiting support hand with the knife’s edge, then scoop it, and place it in a bowl or the skillet.

We strongly urge you to make one small change. If you must scrape with your knife, we recommend never using the cutting edge because it will rapidly dull your blade. Knives are made to withstand up and down force, not lateral force. In other words, it’s made to chop and dice, not to scrape and scoop. Think about how little steel there is at the edge!

What's the fix? Instead of using your knife’s edge, flip the knife and scrape with the spine.

Alternatively, you can spend about $10 and purchase a steel or plastic bench scraper to move your cut up foods to their next location.

Use The Right Tool For The Job

No bones, frozen or super dense foods: As we discussed in a prior post, here, you should never use your primary kitchen knives to cut through bone or frozen foods. Instead, use a heavy duty butcher knife or cleaver if you absolutely must cut bone. Otherwise you risk, and very nearly guarantee, large chips in your knife edge. Dense foods, like squash and coconut should not be broken down by a thin-edged blade.

For frozen foods, please defrost! This is to protect your hands from deep gashes and also to ensure you don’t chip or bend your knife. If you don’t defrost, you’re likely to bend or snap your blade.

The best ways to defrost are:

In the refrigerator, overnight. This is the best method. Can’t defrost overnight? Try #2 or #3.
For sealed bags of food, and especially for animal proteins, place the bag into a large bowl with cold water and replace the water every 15-30 minutes. Good for chicken, beef, fish, shrimp, etc.
At room temperature for non-animal proteins, like bread and fruit.

That’s it for this installment on keeping your knives sharper for longer. We hope you enjoyed it, and learned something new. If you’re ready to upgrade your knives, join us, as we improve the quality of knives across America.

Shop Our Knives

The Chef’s Knife

The NYT Set

Knife Essentials Set

Customer Reviews

Impressive to say the least

I recently got the small petty knife, and I must say, its quality and performance have no comparison. I've never felt a knife cut vegetables so smoothly and easily, and it fits my hand like a glove.

I was initially hesitant to spend so much money on a knife, but after using the small petty knife for a few weeks, I can confidently say that it was worth the investment. This knife has exceeded my expectations in every way and has made my kitchen tasks much easier and enjoyable.

another AR quality knife

I'm loving this petty knife. It's very sharp and just the right size, I'm less interested in my larger kitchen knife now that I've got this. I think the size is ideal for a lot of prep work, definitely bigger than my paring knife but more nimble than my bigger blades. The handle is very comfortable, and I love the soft choil. I don't understand why this choil is not more common. The tip is unique and I'm finding it very practical. One final detail regarding size is that it's small enough that I can sheath it and then hide it in the back of the drawer so that my family can't find it and ruin it.

Loving this Petty Knife

Artisan Revere knives are an investment, but they are so worth it. The Small Petty Knife is probably my favorite of the sizes. I actually laughed out loud when I made my first cut with the Petty. I cut into a lemon, but it felt like a stick of butter. This is just a really versatile size. I have a bad habit of cutting small, soft things (berries, slices of semi-soft cheese) against my thumb instead of on a board, and this works great for that. It's also great for coring tomatoes and slicing shareable foods (spring rolls, bao buns) into pieces. Great purchase.

Small petty knife

This is a right sized knife for a small household where the classic chef’s knife is oversized.

This knife is fantastic! It's perfect for situations where the paring knife was a little too short, and the chef's knife would be overkill. Like my other Artisan Revere knives it feels good in the hand and cuts beautifully.

1 2 3

View Our Top Articles