Monday, November 30, 2009

imma sharpen my own damn knives

Author's Note: Normally I keep it pretty clean here, despite the fact that I'm a serious vulgarian. But it's been a long week. So watch out.

Ok, the background. We made turkey for thanksgiving, and it came out really well. It was really easy, and it fed us 3 meals a day for four days. Oh, and it was twelve dollars. Such tasty value for money is hard for us to pass up. So we're going to do it all the time. And this brings me to knives. Carving all these turkeys will require sharp knives.

a whetstone
a whetstone, you know
for sharpening shit
Watching cooking tv for years has given me a weird perspective on knife sharpening. The message comes through loud and clear: "oooooh, this is soooo hard and you are soooo dumb. you're gonna fuck it up so don't even try." I actually thought today that I should buy a $150 automatic knife sharpener so I could cut up my $11 turkey with my $20 knife. You know what? Fuck that.

America's Test Kitchen can keep their fucking $150 gadget that'll break down in a year. Alton Brown can show off his professionally sharpened knives all the fuck he wants. This is the same mentality that insists on $100 underpants before you can take a goddamn walk in the woods. I'm mad as hell at this gearhead mentality and I'm not going to take it anymore!



You know what, my grandfather sharpened his knives himself, and they were sharp as razors all the time. If he could learn it, I can learn it. And I fucking will. I don't care if I wear my knife down to a nub before I get it right. And the whetstone won't wear out after one goddamn year either.

3 comments:

santos. said...

i'm not sure i know the proper way to sharpen a knife on a whetstone, but every technique i've tried has left me with a slashy finger, so that's good, right? my favourite knife, btw, is a $20 OXO brand one i found in a discount shop. nifty.

leff said...

I'm willing to risk slashy fingers. 'course, i'll research first. the internet knows everything.

Irregular Shed said...

My knife sharpener was £3 ($5) in Ikea and it's brilliant. It does a great job of keeping my 13 year old, £7 ($11.66) knife sharp.