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Poll: pro cooks - do you sharpen your own knives? - Page 2

post #16 of 23
9/5/08 at 4:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas View Post
I came this close to putting Anne Hathaway as an option but chickened out.

Besides, the topic is sharp knives, not sharp knees.
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post #17 of 23
9/5/08 at 10:11pm
I'm not a pro cook or chef. I just like food. I also like knives. There is something very relaxing about sharpening my knives, much like polishing a shoe. I think it has to do with the focus and concentration. This means my knives are pretty darn sharp. I use stones.
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post #18 of 23
9/6/08 at 1:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Milhouse View Post
I'm not a pro cook or chef. I just like food. I also like knives. There is something very relaxing about sharpening my knives, much like polishing a shoe. I think it has to do with the focus and concentration. This means my knives are pretty darn sharp. I use stones.

Same here. I've been cooking for a pretty long while before culinary school. I always used stones, although never took great care of the knives. The knives we got for school are incredibly nice (Messermeister if anyone cares to know) and deserve to be taken care of. I bought a water stone for this purpose, but have only used it once. I hone the steel before class everyday and some days have to hone it during class as well, just b/c we'll be cutting for 4 hours straight.
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post #19 of 23
9/6/08 at 11:46am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret View Post
Besides, the topic is sharp knives, not sharp knees.

H8er!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Milhouse View Post
I'm not a pro cook or chef. I just like food. I also like knives. There is something very relaxing about sharpening my knives, much like polishing a shoe. I think it has to do with the focus and concentration. This means my knives are pretty darn sharp. I use stones.

I'm reading into this that knife care is treated as are other acts of maintenance - some do most everything themselves, others outsource most everything. This is interesting but not especially surprising.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kwilkinson View Post
Same here. I've been cooking for a pretty long while before culinary school. I always used stones, although never took great care of the knives. The knives we got for school are incredibly nice (Messermeister if anyone cares to know) and deserve to be taken care of. I bought a water stone for this purpose, but have only used it once. I hone the steel before class everyday and some days have to hone it during class as well, just b/c we'll be cutting for 4 hours straight.

Glad you answered kwilk - what's your school's position about knife care? I read that you plan on doing it yourself with a waterstone, but - does the school offer to sharpen? Do they recommend an outside service? Or do they just say - here's your knives, keep them sharp or you fail.
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post #20 of 23
9/6/08 at 4:13pm
I would say that you are correct. Now that you mention it, I do think that there are a lot of people that for whatever reason prefer to do most maintenance themselves. I can do a LOT of work on a car, I've gotten paid to repair electronic equipment before, etc.

There are lots of other people that prefer to outsource for whatever reasons; time commitments, pleasure / pain threshold, skills, money, etc.


[quote=Thomas;1286088]

I'm reading into this that knife care is treated as are other acts of maintenance - some do most everything themselves, others outsource most everything. This is interesting but not especially surprising.
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post #21 of 23
9/6/08 at 4:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas View Post
Glad you answered kwilk - what's your school's position about knife care? I read that you plan on doing it yourself with a waterstone, but - does the school offer to sharpen? Do they recommend an outside service? Or do they just say - here's your knives, keep them sharp or you fail.
I haven't gotten a real "position" on it. They've told us how to do it properly between a stone and a honing steel. The school itself doesn't offer anything to sharpen, although they do have waterstones for display and demo that if you're in good with a chef you can use. Basically they show us how to do it on our own b/c of two reasons. 1) Using your knife 4 hours a day and then more than that once you get into the foodservice industry, it is very cost-effective to know how to do it on your own, and 2) b/c it's much more convenient to be able to do it in your own kitchen right before service starts than having to go somewhere else or to ship them off. I've never heard mention of any particular service. Mainly the tone was "sure, you can send it off if you want to save 5 minutes, but learn how to do it right yourself and save time and money."
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post #22 of 23
9/7/08 at 3:59pm
I ran restaurants for several years and I was sous chef of El Gaucho, steak house in town. All of my cooks and myself sharpened our knives with a steel or stone. Approximately once a month, I had a local come in and sharpen all of the house knives and the knives of any of the cooks who wanted theirs professional sharpened.
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post #23 of 23
9/8/08 at 1:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Milhouse View Post
I'm not a pro cook or chef. I just like food. I also like knives. There is something very relaxing about sharpening my knives, much like polishing a shoe. I think it has to do with the focus and concentration. This means my knives are pretty darn sharp. I use stones.

I used to polish a lot, but I've been so exhausted with my schedule lately that I've gotten lazy with regards to that. Same with my knives. Gonna send them back to shun when I Take them out of storage i think.
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