There's the Wrong Way and Jacques Pépin's Way (2011)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
That angle needs to be about 20 or 30 degrees in relation to the steel.
It's not a sharpening steel, it's a honing steel. It doesn't sharpen knives, it aligns the sharp end from \\ or // to /|\ (you're looking at the blade from the heel with the tip pointing away from you). Also, 20-30 degrees is very wrong, Japanese-style blades are usually at about 15 degrees, others around 22.
I don't think we can be sure which he used, and I'd be willing to bet the NYTimes reporter understood the difference.
EDIT: I messed up and linked to a mislabelled honing steel. Replied with a diamond steel that would be more considered a "sharpening steel"
"When that time comes that you need to touch up the sharp edge of your Wusthof knife the 10" steel is a good option. The Wusthof 10" inch steel can realign your knife edge quickly and easily. Honing steels are often confused as sharpeners. Your honing steel will realaign your knife edge but will not put a new edge on it. In trying to explain what a honing steel does try to imaging your sharpening steel and your toothbrush. It is a maintaince tool that you use everyday. In the case of your knife this would be maintaining the knifes edge. Now eventually you would need to see your dentist. That would be a sharpener. This would be a more detailed and agressive action and they would actually remove metal from the edge of the knife. Much like a dentist would do to your teeth. Now to maintain healthy teeth you brush everyday. To maintain a sharp knife you should steel your knife everyday. And remember only go to the Dentist(sharpener) once or twice a year."
> The difference between honing and sharpening your knife depends on whether your knife needs regular maintenance or if you need to reset a dull edge. A honing steel will re-align the microscopic teeth and can be used frequently- even after each use. A sharpening steel will actually take a small amount of steel off the blade, creating a new edge.
So although the previously-linked one might not be a sharpening steel, they do actually exist. Further down the page:
> The difference between a diamond steel or ceramic steel and honing steel, is that a diamond steel and ceramic steel will actually grind away material from the knife, allowing it to reset the edge.
One of the few snobby pet peeves I have is paying ridiculous price at a US steak house (which I luckily don't normally go to anyway) and getting gigantic awkward serrated junk that tears the meat up and shoots juice everywhere.
If I'm paying restaurant prices for steak, then it ought to be tender.
But then my idea of "correctly" is rare, but not quite as blue as what you find in some European restaurants.
Some beef simply won't be tender like that from that amount of cooking that leaves the center of a steak red to pink! For lightly grilled beef to be that tender, it simply has to be tender to begin with (i.e. even if you consume it raw).
Some cuts of beef benefit from a good 45 minutes in a pressure cooker to be "fall-apart" tender. That's a great approach for stews and such; but of course nobody in their right mind does that to a tender steak.
That being said in my experience rested meat actually spills/explodes more juice on initial cut as it is like a balloon. Unrested and already cut meat have the juice in the plate where the sawing motion of a serrated knife has little impact.
Besides really good meat aka aged fatty pieces actually have very little juice. It is the sauce on top.
It is a really wonderful video, and extremely effective teaching.
It's awesome. When you get fast, you feel like The Predator when you do it.
(I can't roll and tie a gallotine in a minute!)
I mainly cook for me and my girlfriend, but I usually buy two chickens at a time because I can yield four breasts, four quarters, and ~2 quarts of stock (depending). I typically sous vide the breasts and serve over a salad, roast the quarters, and save the breast skin for this or that (schmaltz, cracklins, etc...). The boss move is roast the quarters over fingerlings potatoes with lemon juice, olive oil, schmaltz, herb, and stock.
That's $16 for meat for 3-5 meals.
I only get the 2 meals (and some stock), but then, teenagers.
I still have a _lot_ to learn about cooking.
A simple knife skills course for instance taught me some techniques in a couple of minutes that I hadn't figured out on my own in years that dramatically improved my efficiency.
All I do is pat the chicken dry with a paper towel. I also skip the bit about removing the sinew from the tenderloin, because it mangles the tenderloin (which is fine if you're doing a galantine but less so if your kids want to eat a chicken tenderloin).
On the other hand, and as someone who has spent a year or two getting his kids to get over the idea of touching raw meat: if you're grossed out by raw meat, you're handicapped if you want to do meat cookery. If you're going to eat meat --- and I eat a lot of meat --- I think an ethical bare minimum is not to allow yourself to be grossed out by it in its natural state. It's tough to get over skeeviness, but you can't cook well if you're skeeved out by your products, and I generally think you owe it to the universe to cook animals carefully. But I'm weird that way.
So anyways I would just say try to get over any concern about touching raw chicken.
Also when you get good at it you feel like The Predator. Try it on a goose when you get good. It's like turning a small person inside out. >:)
Turned out pretty good! I know my way around a whole chicken (I cut up whole chickens about once every week or two), so deboning wasn't so bad. The legs took too long; you gotta scrape with conviction! I also need to sharpen my paring knife.
I went with a spinach, mushroom, and crouton stuffing like Pépin. Also made a wine cream sauce. Quite good. Threw mirepoix in the pan while the chicken rested, deglazed with white wine, added some stock, strained into a sauce pan, added roux, then finished with cream.
Yes. I like to cook.
Brutal
Also, this page is just shy of 10mb. The UI is daunting and unreadable. Wait, scratch that. After scrolling a bit there was another massive amount of requests on the page. The page now sits at over 700 HTTP requests and 13mb.
Simply scrolling the page creates 20 http requests. What is the utility there? Honestly.
Using a straight razor, I know what sharp is and what sharp means. But I've learned over the years that I suck at sharpening and maintaining a blade, not least because I'm too lazy. When it's an implement you use on your face several times a week it's nigh impossible to fool yourself. I still own a high quality leather and canvas strop and an expensive Japanese water stone, but in retrospect those were aspirational purchases.
Some pro tips for people who want the performance but don't want to or cannot invest the necessary time and effort.
Pro tip #1: For a straight razor, buy disposable blades. They're actually _too_ sharp, making razor burn more likely. But a dull or deformed blade will cut you up like nothing else and becomes discouraging very quickly. It's the rare person who will make it 20 years using a straight razor if they have to strop it every day and sharpen it every few weeks, so just use a disposable blade. I've been using Feather razor and blades for years. It's the best of both worlds, just keep a light touch when shaving to avoid razor burn, especially the first couple of shaves out of the box.
Pro tip #2: Buy a high quality chef's knife. It doesn't need to be super expensive, just have a very hard cutting edge. I prefer the Japanese kind with a very hard (high 50s, low 60s on the Rockwell scale), carbon steel core sandwiched in softer stainless steel. Hard steel sharpens more easily and, most importantly, holds an edge better. However, it's much more prone to microscopic breaks and cracks. Stainless steel is softer but more resilient--it deforms rather than breaks. It follows that you should never "steel" a hard, carbon steel edge; don't buy a knife that is normally used with a honing steel, no matter how expensive or fancy.
Because we're lazy and know we're never going to sharpen it properly, if ever, the trick is remembering that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Use a cutting board made of _soft_ wood. (Or plastic, but I can't speak to that.) There's a reason the old-school hardwood boards were constructed with the end grain oriented up, but those are rare and quite expensive. Most hardwood boards will kill your knife in short-order, especially those tropical ones with embedded silica particles. I got one as a gift and only pretend to use it when they're visiting. For a long time I've been using a cheap wooden board I bought from Giant supermarket. The glue is failing but it treats my knife kindly.
Use a clever or a cheap knife for deboning.
Never let anybody else touch it, ever. They won't respect it like you do. They won't understand.
Never toss it, or even it gently lie it down, in the sink or anywhere else the edge might accidentally so much as touch a hard surface. For obvious reasons, never put it in a drawer.
I've only gone through about 3 chef knives (2, really) in over 15 years, without ever so much as honing one, and they've always been sharper than anything I've ever used in any other household or kitchen. Including Redneck households where the sharpening stone is kept next to the easy chair.
My first one was a $50 special from an online store. It was incredibly sharp, and I used it for years. I was convinced it was magical, and for the first couple of years actually lamented I had no reason to use my sharpening implements. I traveled overseas with it. I made a dish at a party one time and made the mistake of leaving it lying around while I brought the dish to the table. Satan disguised as an innocent young lady used it to cut her brownies, which were in a glass baking dish. Not only did it destroy the knife, but there was a visible deep nick in the blade. No amount of sharpening would have restored it, as given the depth of the nick it likely would have required removing too much metal to be able to restore the original angle (Japanese knifes are like that). And in any event I certainly wouldn't have had the skill, and few "professional" sharpeners would have the skill, either. My other knives were never as good as that one, but they're still better than anything else I've seen.
Note that I'm not a professional chef. If I were a professional I don't think there'd be any way to avoid learning and exercising proper maintenance. But I do cook regularly, and use my knife for almost every aspect of preparation. I'm one of those people who avoids fancy kitchen gadgets, which is actually an easy preference to adopt when your knife works well.
I've been on a Food Lab kick recently that has been quite successful but Pépin's cookbook seems awesome as well and I've been looking to brush up on my technique. Great article and thanks for posting.
I often get enlisted into the cooking effort when I visit a friend for big party or over the holidays or whatevs. It's a low-key way for me to take some of the stress off the host, and it's an easy way to start conversations with other guests, which I like as an introvert.
Anyway, when I'm helping in the kitchen, I usually ask the host if I can "sharpen" (really hone but that distinction isn't important to them) their knives. The usual response is "PLEASE DO." I agree it can come off as judgy, but if you're helping them cook, they take it in the positive spirit it's meant.
Just make sure you tell the host. I once honed some knives, got them nice and sharp, and the host immediately cut herself. I asked if it was okay, but I guess she was so used to the dull knives, didn't have good technique, etc.
My other pet peeve is dry and cracked cutting boards. So I also often offer to oil their cutting board if I can find their spoonwax/mineral oil in the back of the pantry.
When buying pans, look for commercial stuff (or at least make sure the box does not have a photo of a famous TV chef on it). They should be 2x-4x more expensive than the cheap stuff, usually cost less than the really high-end pans, but will last forever and produce great results.