Old timers keep insisting you gotta sharpen a knife on a steel rod

I swear, every time I have a new guy come through my kitchen in Portland, somebody's uncle or dad told them to just run a honing steel up and down the blade and call it sharp. That's not sharpening, that's straightening the edge. A steel does nothing if the edge is dull, you still need a stone. After 15 years and ruining a few cheap knives learning the hard way, I finally get why my mentor yelled at me about this. Anybody else deal with cooks who think a steel is magic?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade_lane1918h ago

Two of my neighbors still swear their grandfather's rusty axe does the job better than anything from a hardware store. It's like people confuse ritual with results and call it wisdom just because it's old. Real skill is knowing the difference between making something better and just making noise.

kevin_bailey17h ago

My buddy Steve has this old hand plane from his grandpa that he swears by, but every time I see him using it he's got a pile of wood shavings up to his knees and the thing still looks rough. Meanwhile I spent $40 on a cheap modern plane at the hardware store and it does the same job in half the time, even if I do have to sharpen it every other week. Maybe it's just me but I feel like half the battle with old tools is just fighting with them to get them to do what a new one does without all the effort. idk, I guess I'm just not skilled enough to appreciate the "rustic charm" of a tool that fights me the whole way.