Kitchen knives

The kitchen knife is probably the most important utensil that you can have in your kitchen. No matter wish type of dish you are preparing for your meal, it is almost sure that at some point you will need to cut, mince, chop, slice, or peel some of your ingredients. The kitchen knife is a must-have regardless of if you are a professional cook or just someone who loves (and even if you don’t love it) cooking at home.

Being such an important tool, it is crucial to have a kitchen knife of great quality that can successfully respond to all its daily tasks. It is also important to know and understand that your foods are not all the same, thus they all require different ways of being cut. We cannot compare cutting a big piece of meat with the cutting of strawberries, because that would be like saying that the shoes you use at a wedding can also be used for playing football. You can try, but we know it is probably not a good idea.

Therefore, it is clear that each type of food requires a different type of knife with its specific design, size, and functionality. However, there is still one thing that remains a common factor: the material of the blade. For centuries, steel has been chosen as the main material for manufacturing different types of blades. From the hand-axe used to hunt in ancient times all the way to the modern-looking Damascus knives nowadays, steel has succeeded as an ideal blade material due to its solidity and strength.

Manufacturing process of a steel knife

When it comes to kitchen knives, steel blades undergo several stages of manufacturing so that in the end your kitchen knives can have a great cutting performance regardless of the food with which they deal. The main stages are briefly described below:

- Forging: The process of forging or blanking is when the blade gets its shape and form. The sheet of steel used for the blade is heated at very high temperatures, and then it is shaped with a hammer while the super hot steel sheet lies over an anvil.

- Grinding: This stage is where the edge of the blade is shaped. It is usually done with a grinding wheel that is spinning at a high speed while placing the edge of the blade against it. The friction between the spinning grinding wheel and the steel of the blade defines the form of the edge making it thinner and sharper than the rest of the blade.

- Heat treatment: In this phase of the process, the blades are heated to very high temperatures. This is done with the purpose of hardening the blade after it has received its final shape.

- Final grinding: Once the blade has its final shape and it has already been hardened; now it is ready for another round of grinding. However, this time the grinding has more the purpose of polishing the blade than actually shaping the edge.

All the stages mentioned above are just the main ones in the manufacturing process of a knife, but it is important to mention that each brand and type of knife usually has its special, additional stages of manufacturing to improve its quality. For instance, most the biggest brands of steel kitchen knives nowadays such as Wusthof, KAI, and Sabatier usually use high-end laser technology to improve the sharpness of their knives.

Another manufacturing phase that might vary depending on the type of knife is the hardening of the blade. All knives are hardened, but not all are hardened at the same level. You have probably noticed in the description of many of the steel knives available on our website values such as “HRC 56.” This type of values determines the level of hardness of the steel blade. According to the Rockwell scale of hardness, the knives with blades that have a hardness level above HRC 55 means that the knife has a superior level of hardness that guarantees its long endurance.

The manufacturing of kitchen knives has never been as advanced and sophisticated as nowadays. That is why we have the opportunity of enjoying knives of exceptional quality and durability. In fact, most kitchen knives’ blades are nowadays made of stainless steel, which means that they are resistant to corrosion and have a longer life span.

Every day we start seeing more different materials being used for the blades of kitchen knives. For instance, ceramic knives are becoming more and more popular in the culinary world, but steel knives are still – and by far- the preferred kitchen knives in the world. That is why at MyChefKnives.co.uk, we offer a very extensive selection of steel knives from the best brands of the market!