The softer the material, the easier it is to sharpen (and dull). There’s some sweet spot there but I imagine it’s much of a preference (and depends on the type of knife), considering knives have been from so many different alloys and differing hardening
Indeed there is a sweet spot. I would rather trade sharpness and more careful maintenance for corrosion resistance. Others would not. I had a housemate that tossed knives in the sink and left them there for days, their Victorinox only showed light rust. You couldn’t really cut anything with them but that didn’t seem to be the point.
I also had a partner who loved Victorinox parers and serrated parers, they could do anything with them and rarely used anything else. Your mileage may vary of course, and I bitched everytime I sharpened them, which was weekly.
Cheaper stainless often has less Chromium and Nickel. Those add to cost, increase corrosion resistance, but make the steel harder to sharpen.
I steel my knives before every use, when they take small flakes off my thumbnail I consider them ready to use for cooking, then I hone them on whatever pants I am wearing. I have issues undoubtedly, but I really like my knives sharp.
Absolutely praising them, cheap knives are great. I love my custom made Japanese knives, the craftsmanship is incredible, perfectly fitted to how I want to cut. But what I usually reach for is a cheap piece of junk.
I never really understood knives, especially kitchen knives. I work with them often… but the quality differences never quite made sense. I get the high carbon = easier to sharpen, etc. But isn’t that one of the lowest qualities of steel? Meaning you can stamp that shit out on the cheap and it’s really about how any given chef manages, sharpens and hones his/her blade?
IDK. Seems like another person stealing my turd, shellacking it, and selling it back to me at an extreme premium…
A hard steel will hold an edge longer, but will be harder to sharpen and is more brittle.
A softer steel will need to be resharpened more often, but is easier to sharpen and less brittle.
For like 99% of the population, a dollar store knife will hold an edge long enough and will be easy to sharpen.
I’m too lazy to link because i’m on mobile, but outdoors555 on YouTube recently made a video where he sharpens a dollar store knife and hack away on a piece of 2x4 and the knife stays sharp throughout the ordeal.
So yeah, overall, it’s how you maintain and sharpen your knife that will make a lot of difference.
A honing steel is only helpful if your knife isn’t properly sharpened because it realigns the burr. Just take an extra minute to remove the burr properly and your knife will stay sharp for a while.
You might want to try Xanthan Gum as a thickener. It is flavorless, does not discolor or cloud sauces, and is temperature and pH stable. It does not need to be heated to work.
The cheapo carbon steel cleaver is my favorite knife in my set. I got a block of Victorinox knives as a gift and yeah they work fairly well (you’re right about sharpening being annoying tho), but the $13 cleaver is where it’s at. It’s sharp, it sharpens well and that style of knife is just so useful. I pull out two other knives generally these days, the serrated one for bread and a ceramic one for tomatoes. The rest? Cleaver time, baybee!
Also, mincing things with the cleaver is great. Mincing things with TWO cleavers? Now that’s joy.
The cheap, but well made carbon steel cleavers from www.wokshop.com or your local Asian market are very good. They will discolor your onions if you don’t oil them (the blades, not the onions. Are you getting enough iron?).
I feel I am getting on a tangent. Victorinox sucks and is overpriced despite what Americas Test Kitchen says, Kenji agrees with me.
Buy some cheap crap, a decent steel, have people ask ‘why isn’t there any hair on that part of your forearm? That’s a bit weird’ and seriously show some veggies what’s what.
The site you linked is where I got my cleaver and I vouch for exactly what you’ve said. Though I haven’t seen an issue with my onions. I don’t oil the blade often but I do use it to chop meat (and thus their fats) once a week.
I’m pretty sure I got their #3 veggie cleaver, though I’m not really sure the difference between that and their carbon steel cleavers. Works fine for meat, but I don’t chop bones with it.
Got any tips on sharpening? I feel sloppy whenever I’m doing it and it seems like you take a pride in it, so if I could pick your brain on how to sharpen my cleavers better, I’d appreciate it!
The 800 is for stuff fresh from the flea market/Daiso (their knives are awesome and cheap) the 4000 is fine (for me) for daily showing veg and meat who’s boss. For straight razors I use 10k.
Regular use of a steel (daily for me because I have issues) means I only sharpen once a month. If you don’t, or you are using different steel in your knives you may want to sharpen more or less frequently.
I’m looking to actually buy myself a chef’s knife. I really only care about having a long lasting knife, that’s not horrible. You would recommend a daiso knife? (Daiso the Japanese Asian import store, right?)
Daiso is Japan's version of a dollar store (though admittedly far, far better than American dollar stores), so I would not go there for a long-lasting knife. Dishes? Absolutely. Knife? No.
I had a $5 knife from Daiso, the balance was very nice, I really liked it. I bought it around 2008? A friend has it now, they like it. Cheap knives are rarely full tang and will rust inside the handle, I drip oil into the handle, dry them carefully, and they last for a long time.
My recommendation would be to get a cheap knife like that and a nice carbon steel cleaver like The Wok Shop, or your local Asian market sells. With those two and less than $20 outlay you can do most anything. Breaking down Winter Squash is a pain, but doable, or you can get something heavy and brutish just for that if it’s you thing.
You just stumbled onto one of the great hacks of Indian cooking: Onion Masala base. myheartbeets.com/indian-onion-masala/ try the butter paneer in this series - so easy, so good.
Keep in mind, those Ninja things have whacky blades, but they differ. One is a “processor” blade, and another is a “blender” blade. I’d venture a guess this is just processed.
Anyway, to your point: the secret to sauces is sifting and filtering. It’s kind of a quick 3 step process:
marinate
heat (heating is somewhat optional in some cases)
blend
sift/filter
If you want a smoother sauce like you’d find in a bottled product, you have a few different ways to go to finish:
What’s the real difference between a cheese cloth and an old worn out tee shirt? I keep a bunch for mostly lint free free rags when etching circuit boards and soldering. I might try that.
Cheesecloth has different weave tightness grades, is not dyed, and I guess I would call it food safe. Couldn’t speak to what kind of material any given tshirts could be made of and say the same I guess.
Most food to be honest. We always cook enough for leftovers because we’re lazy to cook up a meal in the morning, and somehow everything tastes better the next day. Asian food gets better as leftovers
I’ve made bigos a couple times, my family is polish, but we’re a few generations removed from the old country, so it wasn’t exactly part of our regular diet growing up, just something we had once or twice at the local polish church’s feast.
The first time I made it, most of the recipes I found were ridiculously plain, mostly just cabbage, sauerkraut, pork, and kielbasa stewed together without much else, which don’t get me wrong, is a damn fine meal on its own, but I kind of knew deep down there had to be more to it.
So I just kind of took what I knew about polish food and threw it all in a pot, and what I came up something really close to that Chef John recipe. I don’t think I had allspice in mine, and I threw in a jar of pickled beets and every kind of mushroom I could get my hands on, but otherwise that’s almost exactly what I came up with. I’m kind of proud of that now that I’ve seen his recipe.
If anyone has ever been curious about the perpetual stews you tend to hear about in medieval fantasy books and such, bigos is probably about as close as you can get without actually keeping a pot simmering for weeks at a time (although if you want to keep it simmering and add to it as you go, more power to you.) Historically that’s pretty much exactly what it was, whatever the local hunters showed up with went into the pot, so it’s also a pretty hard thing to screw up, there’s not exactly a wrong way to make bigos.
I think I first saw it from Alton Brown, but he braises the beef the day before, then cools it down and uses any drippings from that the next day to cook the veggies/potatoes. Then when it’s ready to eat, you just toss in the beef and let it warm up.
It works because you need high temp (simmering/boiling) for the collagen to break down into gelatin. That’s when the beef gets really “shreddy” for lack of a better term. If you cool it down, though, the gelatin solidifies and holds the beef together in good bite sized pieces. When you warm it back up, you don’t warm back up to a boil (or at least not for long), so all that gelatin doesn’t completely dissolve, and you still get those good chunks.
Lasagna is pretty universally agreed to be better as a leftover. Non-pasta soups are usually better too. I have a sausage, potatoes and pepper hash I make that is mostly a excuse to have it with a fried egg as breakfast in the morning
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