Knife Sharpening with a Wetstone

Learning how to sharpen your knives is an essential cooking skill. A sharp knife does a better job of cutting or slicing food, which is obvious enough, but it also lets you work faster and safer.

Sharp knives cut with less brute force than dull knives. Less brute force does less damage to the food, which you can easily see by looking closely at the cut. Delicate ingredients, like herbs, sliced through cleanly will look fresher for longer, whereas a dull knife will crush more of the cells surrounding the cut, which ultimately accelerates wilting and discolouration.

A sharp blade is predictable. When it strikes, or is drawn across the food's surface, it won't slip. This makes it easy to control how the blade moves through the food, giving you control over your chopping or slicing. A dull blade will slip, which makes control difficult and risks slipping off the food and plunging into your fingers. With a dull knife, it's only a matter of time until you badly cut yourself.

By sharpening your knives yourself, you can control the bevel of the edge to suit how you use a particular knife. For example, you may choose to put a broad 45° angle on either side of a sturdy chef knife for a tough, durable blade that's well suited to chopping. Or for a fine slicing knife, you can hone the edge to a shallow angle of 15° on either side. Such a blade will be fragile, but will slice through food with ease.

Here is a video of my Sous Chef Pierre sharpening my knife on a whetstone.

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