Good kitchen cutlery gives operators an edge

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 1, 1993 by Patt Patterson

When I was a kid growing up in a restaurant family, one of my dreams was to have a knife set like my father's. A European-trained chef, he had an impressive array of cutlery worn around his waist in a black leather apron. They were the tools of his trade as well as the badge of his authority.

There are still chefs who own their own knives, but those days are gone forever. Today most cutlery is supplied by the operation.

I still have most of Dad's knives, but the leather apron is long gone. A few of the knives are sharpened to slivers too fragile to use. The fine German carbon steel took a beautiful edge and held it fairly well. But today's cutlery holds an edge longer, doesn't stain and has far more sanitary handles than the riveted natural wood on my father's knives.

Today most knives are made of some variety of stainless steel. There's no doubt that high-carbon steel sharpens easily and holds an edge for quite a while. Burnishing it with a butcher's steel was enough to restore the edge for a number of times. But that edge is fragile, and it will nick easily. And high-carbon steel stains easily when it comes into contact with tomatoes, onions, citrus fruits and other acid foods.

Stainless steel resists both rusting and staining. But there's a lot of different types of stainless steel; the formulas vary from one manufacturer to another. Not all will take and hold an edge as well as high carbon steel.

The edge is critical to the cutting capability of the knife. There are four main types of edge -- or the method of forming the edge on a blade -- and there's a lot of disagreement among chefs on which is the best for which purpose.

For heavy knives, such as French knives and butcher knives, the rolled edge is the most common. It has the thickest cross-section of all blades, and it's the most resistant to nicks. A rolled edge also sharpens well and touches up quickly with a steel.

Knives with flexible, thin blades, such as slicers and boning knives, frequently have a straight taper edge, also known as a "vee" edge. It also sharpens quickly, touches up well with a steel, but it's more fragile and subject to nicks.

An alternative edge for slicers is the hollow ground pattern. That's a long, double concave grind, which forms a valley on each side of the blade just behind the edge. It's often found in conjunction with serrated edges. It's very sharp when new but nicks easily and is the most difficult to resharpen properly. Most kitchens send that type out to a specialist for resharpening.

Serrated edges are often called scalloped edges and are primarily found on slicers. The saw-tooth effect will saw through tough or fragile foods easily. Serrated edges are almost impossible to resharpen properly in the kitchen, because steels, stones and electric sharpeners take off the saw teeth. They have to be resharpened by a specialist.

Handles are almost as important as the blade to most chefs and cooks. The two types of handle material most commonly in use are wood and plastic. Because of sanitation regulations, wooden handles aren't the same as they were in my father's time.

The wood used is usually rosewood, walnut or any other hardwood with minimum porosity. Today most wooden handles are pressure-impregnated with plastic resin to fill any pores so the wood can't absorb oil, water and bacteria.

There are two different types of wooden handles. The two-piece handle has a piece of wood on either side of the full width "tang," which extends back from the blade. Two-piece handles are generally fastened by rivets run through the wood and metal tang.

One-piece handles are bored through their length to accept the tang. The wood is held on with a nut that screws onto the threaded end of the tang.

There are three types of steel, and each chef has a favorite. There are smooth steels, the most preferred with high-carbon blades; textured steels, very popular with stainless blades; and straight-cut steels, which actually remove metal from the edge of the blade to restore sharpness.

The smooth or polished steel burnishes the edge after sharpening on a stone or on a sharpener. It also straightens the feather edge on a carbon steel blade to restore sharpness between sharpenings.

The textured steel has a "frosted appearance," because of its roughened and highly tempered surface. It sharpens by abrading a small amount of metal from the blade's edge.

The straight-cut steel has fine grooves running lengthwise. Steels are available with fine, medium and coarse cut. They are tempered, and even the fine steel usually removes a larger amount of metal from the blade edge than from the textured steel.

There's a wide range of cutlery types. Everyone develops a preference for certain sizes and shapes, and the well-equipped kitchen will have a variety. After all, they are still the tools of the trade.