Let’s Learn About Knives – Part 3: How to Take Care of Kitchen Knife for Long-Term Use

Copied the URL !

Our journey around the kitchen knife world has reached the final round.

This last round is about how to take care of kitchen knives to use them for a long time.

Keeping the kitchen knife clean every day with regular maintenance to keep the sharpness will allow you to use it for a long time.

Use it carefully every single day. By doing so, the kitchen knife will be an indispensable and irreplaceable item for everyone.

We will also introduce the disposal method when the kitchen knife has reached the end of its life. You can use it as a reference when the time comes.

How to Take Care of Kitchen Knife for Long-term Use

Even though your knife is a kitchen knife that is indispensable for everyday use, if you carefully use it with care, you will be able to use it for a long time.

In addition to daily care such as thoroughly washing and drying, you should sharpen it if you feel that the sharpness is getting lesser.

If you continue to use it for many years with such care, your hands will be familiar with the knife to the point you will be able to feel a sense of unity with the knife, making it as if the cutting edge were your own fingertips.

If you are new to using a kitchen knife, please use it carefully with care.

Optimal Care According To the Material

Do you know the material of your kitchen knife?

There are several materials used for a knife blade. The method of care will be different according to the material.

Steel

There are two kinds of steel; blue paper steel and white paper steel. Famous for its sharpness but has the disadvantage of quickly getting rusty. Therefore, regular maintenance is necessary.

Stainless

Rust-resistant and durable. Even though stainless steel didn’t get rust, its sharpness was still inferior to steel, so it was regarded as unsuitable for business use.
In recent years, there are also many stainless knives with sufficient hardness and toughness.

Ceramics

Ceramics knives are made of non-metal zirconia ceramic material. It has excellence in hardness, sustained long-term sharpness, rust-resistant, and anti-odor transfer.

However, it isn’t easy to clean or sharpen it by yourself at home. Because it lacks elasticity, we need diamond grinding wheels that need high-speed rotation to sharpen the knife.

Basic Care Method

No matter what kind of material your knife is made from, let’s avoid leaving it be after being used.

Even with kitchen knives that are hard to rust, if you don’t properly wash and dry them, the air may contact ingredients and moisture the raw materials, causing oxidation and rust.

When you finish using the knife, let’s keep good care of it with these steps:

・When you finish using the knife, wash thoroughly with dishwashing detergent or cleanser.
・Wipe off moisture thoroughly and dry it.

Sharpen It Regularly So You Can Use It For A Long Time

Since a kitchen knife is used every day, inevitably, the sharpness will gradually drop even if you carefully clean it every day. It happened because the jagged which attached to the cutting edge gradually disappears.

Therefore, we recommend you sharpen your knife regularly. By sharpening your knife with a grindstone or whetstone, a small cut is attached to the cutting edge, and this jagged cut the ingredients. The sharpness of the kitchen knife will improve significantly, and you will notice that it does affect the taste and texture of the ingredients as well.

Even if you think that sharpening the knife is difficult, you can begin to prepare the whetstone quickly. It would be best if you tried to challenge yourself once. If you want to know more about sharpening knives, please do read this article.

Learn Kitchen Knife – Extra Edition: How Much Do You Know? The Origin of Kitchen Knife We will show you how to sharpen knives that anyone can do at home.Let's sharpen when you feel that kitchen knife essential for everyday cuisine, sharpness is getting worse ....You can realize that sharpening improves the sharpness of kitchen knives and affects the taste and texture of ingredients as well.Even ...

In Case If You Want To Throw Away Your Knife

Even if you use your knife carefully with care, someday, your knife will reach its lifespan.

When your knife can’t be sharpened anymore or get rust or broken, that might be the sign that it’s already the time for your knife to be replaced.

However, many people don’t understand how to dispose of their old knives.

So, we will show you how to throw away your unusable knives.

This instruction is for disposing of knives in Japan. Your country might have a different way of disposing of knives.

In Japan, there is also a method of requesting the collector of an unused item to collect your knives. But, I would like to explain how to dispose of your knives according to the local governments.

Because it is a kitchen knife you have used carefully, let’s follow the rules of properly disposing of the property.

*houchou: Japanese language for knife.

Make sure of the trash classification

First, we must make sure which garbage type your knife is. How to dispose of kitchen knives varies depending on each local government, so the separation type may also be different in your area.

Don’t forget to check in a brochure that describes how to separate garbage issued by your local governments as to which sorting type the kitchen knife belongs to. It likely belongs to either ‘metal’, ‘dangerous/hazard’, or ‘incombustible’.

Wrap the kitchen knife with paper and write specifically that it is a kitchen knife.

Once you know the sorting type, let’s put it out like garbage on the trash collection day.

However, it seems that there are very few governments that it is okay if you throw away your knife just like that. Most governments instruct you to use collecting bags or optional containers to specify ‘kitchen knife’, ‘knife’, or ‘dangerous goods’ to show that there is a knife. This is a way to protect the garbage collector from getting injured by the knife blade.

You can also consider wrapping it using newspaper or cloth so that it won’t injure anyone. Or you can also roll the knife with newspaper and put duct tape. You can use either newspaper or unused cloth. Make sure that the knife won’t jump out from its wrapper.

You can put the kitchen knife into a paper bag, fold it, and wrap it up with duct tape for those who want extra safety.

It is also okay to put it inside a collection bag or any container and write specifically on the bag or container containing an unused kitchen knife.

Please be careful not to put out the garbage in the state that the part of the blade is exposed.

We have already briefly described the method of care and disposal of a kitchen knife. With this, our journey around the kitchen knife world will be finished.

Thank you for being with us until the end.

A kitchen knife can be said as a precious partner of cooking. We would be happy if our article were able to serve you a lot of knowledge about knives.

Let’s Learn About Knives – Part 2: How to Use Knife Properly This is the second part to learn more about kitchen knife.This time, we will talk about how to use the knife properly.We will show you, so you can also compare it with your own way of using knife.This way, maybe you can find useful methods about how to cut smoothly.

Let’s Learn About Knives – Part 1: Compare Thoroughly About The Knife’s Differe... Know more about the Kitchen Knives you usually use at regular basis. We will introduce the type of kitchen knife (Western Knife, Japanese Knife, Chinese Knife). In addition, there's also thorough comparison up to difference of the materials and types.