I didn’t really appreciate the importance of a good knife and a good knife sharpener until becoming a vegan and preparing a lot of vegetables every week. Chop, slice, dice, chiffonade (I am getting ahead of myself) – preparing vegetables seemed to take too long, included too many injuries and the end result never looked like the edges seen in my cookbooks. I even went to class at the Natural Gourmet Cooking Institute in NYC, in part how to learn how to cut vegetables. Seriously.
I found out the hard way that my good knife, the one I had actually took care of and treated with the respect, was getting dull quickly and that I needed to maintain it to keep the blade sharp. After being nervous about trying one, I finally decided to try a sharpening steel to keep my blade sharp every day (note: for this to work you have to start with an already sharp knife).
Success. The honing technique was easier than I thought and is now something I now do every day right before I start to prepare a meal. After looking into several, I chose the Wustof 10” sharpening steel. Now that I am taking better care of my knife, it is taking care of me and is so much easier to prepare vegetables and do so safely.
