Equipment - Knife Sharpeners

     Knife sharpeners may seem like a frivolous expense to most people, and I completely understand that.  Sharpeners are something that most people don't know how to use, don't know what to get, and/or seem expensive.  However, I say that a knife sharpener is one of the very basic things you need in your kitchen.  Right after you've bought a decent knife and a cutting board, you absolutely need a knife sharpener to keep your knife useable.  See, your knife starts going dull as soon as you start using it.  First you won't be able to cut tomatoes, then fruits, then vegetables, and the next thing you know, you've cut your thumb while trying to muscle your way through a chicken breast.
     Remember when I said a dull knife is the most dangerous knife?  It's absolutely true, and the lesser the quality of your knife, the more it will go dull.  The question is, is it worth it to cut your hand open often to avoid buying a sharpener?  I guarantee buying a sharpener is cheaper than a hospital visit to stitch up your hand.  I also guarantee that it's cheaper than  buying a new knife every time yours gets dull.
     There are three types of sharpeners I want to discuss:  Crock sticks, stones, and electric, but before that, I want to tell you about an experience I had last week.  See, we have at least 3 different sharpeners in our kitchen, but I had seen these commercials for a $15 sharpener on television and I was curious if they worked.  I figured that, if one of those would work for you, then you wouldn't have to be as concerned about price.  Everyone can put away $7 a month for 2 months to prevent a hospital trip, in my opinion.  So, I went to Wal-Mart in their "As Seen on TV" section and bought this:
     I have a lot of experience with different kinds of sharpeners, so I took it home and my dad and I gave it a try.  We found the dullest knife in our kitchen - the one that wouldn't cut a tomato (you need a razor's edge on a knife to cut a tomato without squishing it) and ran it through this "miracle product" several times.  The blade would not cut the tomato.  So, next, we found a blade that would cut the tomato and ran it through the Samurai Pro.  The knife would no longer cut the tomato.
     In my opinion, that pretty much sums up my opinion about the $15 knife sharpener that you can get on the "As Seen on TV" section of different mega stores.  I think that if you buy this, you not only won't get sharp knives, you'll probably end up dulling the ones you have, rendering them more dangerous.
    Anyway, on to sharpeners I believe work.  As I said before, there are three types of sharpeners I'm going to talk about and at the end I'm going to throw in a paragraph or two about steels as well as a paragraph about using what you have in your kitchen to do the same thing (but it's a little advanced).
    Let's start with the basics - why does your knife get dull?  Well, it has to do with a lot of different things.  First, the amount you use your knife, will, of course, get more dull the more you use it.  This is because it wears down as you use it, just like the tires on your car and the soles on your shoes.  Logic dictates that, the more you cook, the more you'll use your knife and the more it'll go dull.  Second, the type of cutting board, or lack thereof, can have an impact on your knife's sharpness.  According to wood cutting board lovers, the blade of your knife can slide through wood grain at a molecular level which prevents dulling while plastic cutting boards press on the edge and dull it.  However, my opinion is that you can take that money you saved by buying a plastic board instead of a wood board and use it to buy one of these sharpeners.  Finally, sometimes, your knife isn't always dull.  Sometimes, it just needs to be honed.  The difference is that, when you sharpen a knife, you actually take a little bit of metal off the knife.  If you sharpen too much, at a coarse grit, you'll wear away at the knife.  Alternatively, honing a knife re-aligns the metal molecules and makes your knife sharper by comparison.  There are two options on this list that both sharpen and hone your knife to reduce wear and tear on your knives.

Crock Sticks $10 - $55
      Crock sticks are ceramic rods that are (usually) positioned at a 45º angle to one another while secured to a wooden or metal base.  The ceramic has a grit that can either sharpen or hone your knife.  A basic setup for one of these is about $20 to $25 and it comes with either medium or fine grit sticks.  A medium grit stick will actually sharpen your knife while a fine grit will hone your knife.
     The nice thing about these is that you can buy sticks with different grits for about $5.  That means that if you buy a set that has one grit, you can get another grit for relatively cheap.  Sets that come with three different types of sticks go for about $55 and you can buy the sticks on their own for $10.
     The only problem with crock sticks is that finding them is often difficult.  You won't find them in a cooking store, nor will you find them in the cooking tools area of your local store.  In fact, I can only find them in sporting goods stores.  That's because most stores assume that the only time you'd choose to use this method of sharpening is when you're cooking.  However, my dad uses it at least once a week.  Here's how to use a set of crock sticks like the ones above.

Stones $10 - $75
     Sharpening stones come in two types: wet and oil.  They also come in multiple grits, coarse, medium and fine.  If you're going to get a stone, buy at least a medium and a fine.  The fine is for your regular honing while the coarse and medium are actually for sharpening.  The only difference between the two types is what they need to be whetted with.  If you can't figure that out, oil stones are whetted with mineral oil and wet stones with water.  The very basic stones are $10 for each stone while a tri-stone with 3 sides and grits goes for between $50 and $75, depending on where you find it.

     The trick to sharpening stones is that you absolutely have to figure out at what angle you'll be sharpening your knife.  That means, you have to figure out what the angle between the knife and the sharpening stone will be.  This sounds really easy until you realize that that angle must remain the same every time you sharpen your knife.  My teaching chefs recommended between 10º and 20º to get the best edge on your blade.  That takes a lot of concentration at first, but once you're used to it, it's easy as pie.
     One important thing to remember if you do use an oil stone is to get some mineral oil from the pharmacy to use as the oil.  Food-based oils go rancid and make your stone stink.
 Here's how you use a sharpening stone:

Electric sharpeners $20 - $400
      There are two distinct positive sides to electric knife sharpeners:  First, you can find an electric knife sharpener any-freaking-where.  I mean, they're in the cooking aisle in every major "super" store.  Second, they are seriously the easiest thing on this list to use.  You put the blade in the sharpener's slit and pull it toward you and voila you have a sharp blade!  There's no learning curve; there are no angles to remember; and there's no repetition.
      Now that you've read that, you may wonder why I don't have an electric knife sharpener.  The fact is, that though they have the largest range of prices on this range, they also have the largest range of reliability.  See, electric knife sharpeners are kind of like the diet programs of the cooking market.  There are some that work just fine, and they cost a lot.  There are also very many that either don't work or work very poorly and don't cost nearly as much.  Both of them have a cost that could be prevented with hard work, or practice in sharpeners' case.
     The major problem I have with even the best electric sharpeners is that they only sharpen your blade.  There's no honing with an electric sharpener which means that every time you use one, it's taking a little bit of metal off your blade.  That means that, eventually, you're going to wear through the blade of the knife and have to replace it.  If you press down on the blade while you're using one of these sharpeners, you can cause the blade to wear out too quickly as well.
     If you decide to buy an electric sharpener, do yourself a favor and do your homework.  Go to the stores you frequent and write down the brands and types of sharpeners they have (I always have a notebook with me) then go home and search for reviews for those sharpeners on the internet.  I have good luck entering something like "Presto 08800 knife sharpener reviews" and I'll get a few different sites.  Read the good and the bad on several websites and draw an opinion from those reviews.

Steels $15 - $180
     Steels are one of those things that come with knife kit that many people don't really understand.  They're dedicated to honing your knife, not sharpening it.  The thing with a sharpening steel is that it aligns the edge of your knife so that it seems sharper.  Most chefs use a steel once a day, at the beginning of cooking.  When you're only doing major prep work once a day, you can probably get away with doing it once or twice a week.
      When I was in school, I was told that steels work by being magnetized and pulling the metal to one side or the other.  My father's steel isn't magnetized in any way, shape or form.  I can't find anything on the internet that says which way is correct, so just use your best judgement.  The most important thing to remember when you're buying a steel is that its full length is smooth or has grooves that run the length of it.  A bumpy steel will not make your knife sharper.
     Here's how to use a steel:

     Now, there's one exception to the steel being solely for honing and not for sharpening.  They're called diamond steels and they have diamond dust along the length.  They're also magnetic, so they both sharpen and hone your knife at the same time.  I should also mention that they're on the higher end of the price range for these.

Coffee Mugs $1 - $10
     Okay, so we've gone over sharpeners and you might be considering buying one, but you might also be thinking that you can't afford one for a couple of months.  That's fine, no one's expecting you to run out immediately anyway.  You might want to look on craigslist and in garage sales while you're saving up to see if you can find one cheaper.
     In the meantime, you might have a knife go dull because they do that.  Here's a quick fix that takes more work than crock sticks and electric sharpeners, but will get the job done.  Turn a coffee mug over and feel the bottom edge.  Feel how it's rough?  It's made of the same stuff that a crock stick is, just less refined.  You can use the bottom edge of the coffee mug as a sharpening stone until you save up the money to buy one.
     As with the sharpening stones mentioned before, position your blade at 10º to 20º to the edge of the mug and draw the blade across several times then turn it over and repeat that.  Here's how it'll look.

     I think that a knife sharpener is one of the best things you can get for your kitchen.  It'll keep your knives sharp and safe and make your cooking so much easier in the process.  If you're having a hard time saving up for one, remember one when someone asks you what you want for your birthday or Christmas, and keep your eye out for helpful garage sales.  When buying a non-electric sharpener used, there's literally only one thing to remember - make sure it's not broken.  Broken crock sticks or sharpening stones will not sharpen anything.
     Remember that the non-electric sharpeners will take practice.  As I tell my daughter, "Nothing worth doing is ever easy or comes without practice."

What kind of knife sharpener do you have?  What do you like about it?  What's hard?  Questions?  Comments?  Tweet to @cookingcheap

Equipment - Cutting Boards

     Right after you get yourself a good knife, you need to worry about maintaining it.  The problem with knives, regardless of their quality, is that a knife will begin to go dull as soon as you start using it.  The lower the quality, the faster it will go dull.  There's an old saying that the most dangerous knife is a dull one, and it's true. A dull knife requires more pressure to go through the food and that excess pressure eventually leads to you slipping with the knife and cutting yourself.
     So, the next two weeks in equipment are dedicated to making sure that you have the proper tools to keep your knives sharp and safe.  The first of these tools is a good cutting board.  Cutting boards protect that razor-thin line of steel that makes your knife sharp from the hard surface that most likely makes up your cabinet tops.  That said, I have cut on a cabinet before, but I also had access to an amazing sharpening tool.
     Cutting boards are made of a couple types of materials, all of which are softer than stone and metal.  This is so your knife can press into the material instead of the material pressing into it.  The less give a cutting board has, the more damage it does to your knife's edge.  That being said, you don't want something so soft that your knife goes right through it.  I've never seen a cutting board that did that, but I'm sure someone, somewhere has a horror story about it.
     Your two main materials for cutting boards are going to be wood and plastic.  I've seen glass plates shaped like cutting boards, but I'm almost certain they're supposed to be decorative.  When glass is pressed to hard it breaks.  When it's pressed just hard enough to mar its surface, it creates glass dust which is kind of like sand.  That sand will wear your blade down really fast.
Wood:
      Wood cutting boards are the proverbial favorites of chefs everywhere.  They're beautiful, they're natural, they're long lasting, and they're way better for knives.  However, they're also porous, hard to clean, and expensive.  The website where I found that picture to the left right there sells that board for over $60. I'll admit that wood cutting boards can stay in the family for generations.  In fact, I'd put money that there's a family somewhere using the same cutting board their Great Great Great Great Grandma used to cut vegetables in the covered wagon.  If taken care of properly, a wood cutting board can last forever.
     Proper care is the key, though, because if improperly cared for, your board doesn't just become useless, it becomes dangerous.  I'm seriously in amazement that my image searches for poorly taken care of cutting boards doesn't come up with anything like I've seen, but trust me, wood cutting boards can be scary.  When wood gets really wet and is allowed to dry naturally, it cracks.  When wood cracks, it opens up hollows in the wood and releases splinters that can get in your food.  Hollows in the wood of a cutting board mean that you might not get all the raw chicken out of the board the next time you clean it.  Honestly, I've studied microbiology long enough that the thought of the pores in wood absorbing salmonella today and depositing it on lettuce tomorrow is enough to scare me away from wood boards.  
     However, if you're willing to spend the money on it and aren't nearly as educated about microbes as I (really, don't try, it's horrible), a wood board will meet your needs, if you take care of it.  When you buy a new board, don't assume its already been seasoned or oiled.  I typically don't assume that anyone's done anything to make my life easier, and I'm safer because of it.  Go down to the drug store and buy some mineral oil.  DO NOT USE VEGETABLE, OLIVE, OR ANY OTHER FOOD OIL.  We use mineral oil because it has no proteins which can sour, or go rancid.  Oiling a board with an oil that will later go rancid is as good as throwing it away
     Warm your oil slightly in the microwave for 10 to 15 second and then, with a soft rag or towel rub the oil into the wood slowly and with the grain of the wood.

The grain goes this way

Wait for the oil to soak in and repeat four or five times.  This will fill in the pores of the wood and make it more bacterial resistant.
     Once that's done, maintaining your wood cutting board isn't as hard as you think.  Two main things to remember:  never submerge it in water and never ever put it in the dishwasher.  When you need to wash your cutting board, scrub it gently with soap and water, rinse it, and pat it dry.  That will prevent cracking.  If you've cut something like chicken or raw meat (most people suggest you just don't do that), wipe it down with some white vinegar to kill excess bacteria.  Some people recommend using bleach on your wood board, but I don't.  See, just like bacteria, bleach can soak into the pores of a board and possibly contaminate something later.  I just like to prevent poison in my kitchen.  Vinegar will also remove bad smells that might have stayed on your cutting board.
     As often as once a week and as rarely as every six months, you'll have to reseason your cutting board as mentioned above.  This keeps the bad stuff out of the pores and lessens your family's chance of getting sick.  If your board ever cracks, there are dozens of resources on the internet about how to reseal it.
As with all your other items, this can be purchased used, but you want to be very, very, very careful when buying a wooden cutting board.  As I said, you can keep these things forever, if they're properly maintained, but if they aren't you could end up getting sick or hurt.  Check a cutting board for deep cracks that go all the way through it.  Even though I mentioned resealing resources a second ago, you don't know how long that crack's been in that board or how much the family has worked to keep it clean.  There's a chance that you're buying a board with a crack that's been building up bacteria for 5 years.  Ask the seller when the last time it was seasoned then do it again when you get home.

Plastic:

     Plastic cutting boards are my favorite thing in the world, for many reasons.  First off, though they may not be as pretty as a wooden cutting board, they're inexpensive.  That ad up there (click it, just for fun!) has plastic cutting boards for $16 a piece.  That might seem like a lot, but it's at Sur La Table, a really expensive store, and they do that folding thing.  Just think, for the price you paid for the wooden board I put up there, you could buy 3 of these with the tax.  On the other hand, you could go to Wal-Mart and buy a 3-pack of different sized cutting boards for $13.  They don't fold or anything like that, but they work.

     Here are the pros of plastic boards:  they're non-porous, they clean easily, they're cheap as heck, and I have yet to have to throw one away.  There are even really thin cutting mats that look like cheap place mats that we have in our cabinets 4 years later.  It's really hard to destroy these things.

     The other thing I like about plastic cutting boards is that you can get them in more than one color.  You may wonder why that's important, but it really is when you have more than one.  See, when I make food, I'm often cutting meat and vegetables at the same time instead of cutting one, washing the cutting board, then cutting the other.  The other day, I had my daughter tenderizing chicken while I cut vegetables.  When you have those kinds of things going on in the same kitchen (I always recommend training your kids to help), you absolutely need more than one cutting board.  When you have more than one cutting board, it's easier to keep track of them if you have more than one color.

     See, you probably realize that you can't cut your salad vegetables on the same cutting board that you cut your chicken before you cooked it without washing them in between.  What you may not realize is that the grooves that the knife leaves in your cutting board may not have been cleaned out by that quick scrub with soap and water that you gave the board between prep.  To eliminate this problem, we have multiple cutting boards.  I found this set of colored cutting boards at Ross for $20.  It has 3 colored cutting boards, red, blue, and green, and a holder for them.  This thing retails at $65.  I call it a win.

     When I cut my vegetables, I know that I used the red one (I'm supposed to use green, but that's the one I picked), so I know I can't cut my chicken on the red one, I have to use the green or blue.  In OSHA approved kitchen, there's actually a full color-coded method to this, but my rule is to just not use the same color for two different types of food.  You can pick up colored cutting boards just about anywhere nowadays.

     The best thing about plastic is its ability to be washed.  When I'm done with my cutting for dinner, I stick them in the dishwasher.  The high temperatures of the dishwasher make it so no bacteria can survive.  If you don't have a dishwasher, you can always put hot water in your sink and add a tiny bit of bleach to it for your cutting boards to soak in.  Always make sure to rinse them off afterward.

     No matter what cutting board you choose, you have to be comfortable with it.  Make sure, if you find a cutting board at an estate sale that's got 1" long legs, that you'll be comfortable cutting on top of it.  Heaven forbid you spend money on something you'll hate.

Equipment - Knives 2

     So, we talked about the different parts of knives last week and what you need to look for in a good knife.  This week, I'm going to talk about the different types of knives that are out there and which ones you really need.  Please note that the pictures I'm going to post are going to be mostly non-serrated blades because that's what I prefer.  However, the rules still apply if you want a serrated set, and I'll think no less of you for having them.  The truth of the matter is that you really don't need a whole bunch of different knives to cook well.  I have a really nice set because I got several when I went to culinary school, and my dad has his collection from a whole life's work.  We've never broken a knife and we've never gotten rid of one.

     Chef's knives are also called French knives or kitchen knives.  It kind of depends to whom you're talking.  No matter what the name, it's the same knife.  Most chef knives are either 6 or 8 inches from the tip of the blade to the end of the handle, but they can be as long as 12 inches.  Chef knives are the one knife you absolutely, positively need.  If you can't get any other knife, go get one of these.  You'll use them to chop vegetables, mince herbs, and slice meat.  They can also be used for virtually any other purpose, even if I mention it as a specialty knife later.  Above this entry are three different types of chef knives.  The top one has a typical blade which is either French or German depending on where the chef that names it is from.  The others have Asian blades.  Specifically, the bottom is a Santoku blade, which I already mentioned.  I recommend a French or German-shaped blade.  They allow the blade to rock while you cut.  Remember when I mentioned that you should leave the tip of your knife on the cutting board when you cut?  That shape of knife will make it easier.

Boning knives are, surprise surprise, for taking the bones out of meat.  They've got longer, flexible blades that curve nicely at the tip.  These blades allow you to get right up to the bone and cut right along it, pulling the meat off neatly.  However, because it's used less, mine stays sharper longer, so I also use it for the slicing tasks that require an ultra sharp blade, such as slicing tomatoes.  These aren't really that necessary, if you're not going to be deboning many different things.  You can do that with a chef knife too, but it won't be as clean.  Similar to this, but slightly different is the filet knife which is specifically for fish.  I have less use for a filet knife than a boning knife; you probably will too.

Paring knives are small versions of chef knives even though their blades aren't bigger than the handle.  Paring knives are really just tiny versions.  In fact they're 3 to 5 inches long.  They're great for peeling fruit and cutting small items like strawberries.  If you're really good, you can carve roses out of tomatoes and neat things from watermelons and pumpkins.  However, if you have a peeler, you don't need this - and you really just should get a peeler.  They're way easier to use.

Welcome to the serrated knife in my kitchen.  Bread knives are always serrated because they need their teeth to break through the crust of bread.  There is no substitute for a good bread knife, because your chef knife will just crush your bread.  However, if you're not baking bread (shame on you!), you really don't need one of these until you are.

The best thing about these types of knives is that, many times you can find them all in a good knife set.  However, good knife sets are hard to come by, and even harder to buy on a budget.  The ones that come with a knife block are the best because you don't have to worry about where you're going to store them all.  On the other side, I see chefs knives by themselves in almost every grocery store I visit.  Heck, I saw one for $25 in a restaurant supply store today.  Make sure the knife is comfortable in your hand and isn't so light it'll fly around the kitchen if you let it go by accident.