Are you ruining your Japanese knives? Like most high-quality equipment, these knives need a little love and care. When sharing things with other people, we can’t control everything that happens to our items, but we should educate those who use them. Take for example cleaning the dishes:
1. You put your knife in the dishwasher.
Knives should never go in the dishwasher.
Dishwasher detergent is very abrasive, and along with the banging around that happens during a wash cycle, will take the sharp edge right off your knife. Plus, it’s not safe for the person unloading the dishwasher!
Always wash knives by hand in the sink with dish soap and water. Keep the blade facing away from you and the knife low in the sink. Also, don’t leave your knife to air dry. Instead, take a tea towel and, holding the knife with the blade facing away from you, dry the knife in short vertical motions perpendicular to the edge. Running a tea towel horizontally along the blade is very dangerous, and a sure-fire way to cut yourself.
Even if you are aware of the devastating nature of the dishwasher on your knives, your close ones may not be. When you decide to invest in a good Japanese knife, always educate your family to avoid putting them in the dishwasher. This is the fastest way to ruining your knives.
2. You store your knives unsheathed in the utensil drawer.
There are a few reasons this is bad: first, it’s dangerous to have a loose knife in a drawer. Second, an unsheathed knife rubs against other things, which causes it to get dull very quickly. The best way to store your knives is on a magnetic knife strip or on a magnetic knife stand.
Magnetic knife holders, that we have in our offer, are actually our favourite. They are the best way to store and showcase your beautiful collection of knives. Choose the wooden knife strips as it’s just a block of wood so it doesn’t get much easier to clean than that, no hidden nooks or crannies. You can simply wipe it clean, and you are done.
If you’re really short on space, don’t like the idea of hanging your knives at sight and need to store those knives in a drawer, just slip them into a blade guard first!
3. You slide your knife, blade down, across the cutting board to clear away what you just chopped.
That’s a nasty habit many of us admit to being doing. Do you do this? After you’ve got a pile of chopped veggies, you scrape your nice, sharp knife blade down — right across the cutting board to clear some space. Of course, when you actually think about it, that’s a terrible way to treat the blade!
An easy solution: just flip the knife over before you slide. That way the flat spine side does the clearing, and you don’t ruin your blade.
