Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)
This event was on
Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern
Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.
Question:
Is a honing rod the ideal/best tool for honing a chef knife & santoku knife?
— YVONNE TETREAULT
Answer:
So a honing Rod is a great tool and I use mine almost every time I use a knife but not every time it depends on how sharp your knives are and how they're holding up. But if you do use honing Rod often, you're gonna see that you're blade retains its Edge much longer, which is great. If you're feeling any kind of resistance right away in your knife go right to your honing Rod first to see if you need to sharpen it or just hone it now what a honing. the honing Rod does basically Is it kind of puts the blade and shape? So in both these examples like even on this antoku knife. We're talking about a blade that's sharpened on both sides. So, you know, you're basically the blade is coming to a tip like this. And it goes right down the edges this tip now certain Japanese knives one side might be flat and then just one side is like this but both these examples are ones that are like this and that's a great example for honing as well. So if you have this pyramid over time as it's pushing up, you're gonna see that the top end of your knife the blade starts to kind of bend over to one side and what the honing Rod does is just kind of knock it back into place. So and it depends, you know, either way but you basically want instead of having it kind of knocked over from one of the side of the other you want it to be as kind of straight as possible making that and it will happen. Even if you have a wide, you know base like that. But so the honing tool actually help keep it, you know, so it's not arched over to the side which is if you're trying to cut through something, you know, having a tip on the end of it as much better than having a blunt Edge like that as well. So the honing tool basically knocks it in so as a sharp point on it like that so According tools something you should use pretty often. You don't have to do it every time you use your knife. But like I said, I probably do it every couple times. I use my life just to be able to keep my life sharp. If you don't you will definitely see that your knives won't keep their edges long and they're not going to be as sharp as you think they are. So I would definitely recommend using it often.