Wow, I had never or even seen the word honing used for anything but skills before! It was actually for cutting through a big piece of meat, which was frustrating me since it just did not seem to work because dull knife and all. It felt like it got better results after, though. Could honing do that? Wow, and here I thought I knew a thing or two about cooking...! Never occurred to me to use my good ol' trusted mortar for anything but crushing whatever needed to be crushed. Have to say, I'm learning a lot in this thread!
Honing your knife should definitely make it easier to slice through things. It will also make your cuts look a little nicer because you are cutting rather than mashing or tearing as you tend to do with a dull blade.
Then -- and I don't wanna sound stupid here -- but if honing makes it superior vs a dull blade, how different does it get the blade vs sharpening (which I thought was sharpened vs dull blade=)? Like, how often should a blade be sharpened vs honed, and how big is the difference in result between those?
Are you talking about that Ronco knife set? That's not the first time I've heard people complaining about them being cheaply made and not staying sharp. I suppose you could keep sharpening them regularly, but ultimately it sounds like they were made with low quality metal that is too soft and dulls down easily. I tried buying some knives at Dollar Tree to see if I could save some money and perhaps get by with them, and it was a similar situation - they went duper dull within a few days use, and worse yet they even started to rust after being washed in the dishwasher. My folks bought me one of those Ming Tsai Aeroknives, which I still have - but it too is really cheaply made. In fact I heard that there are multiple versions of the knife, some are higher quality than others, but I apparently got the "cheaply made" version. It's not even a sharp blade at all, if you look up close, it looks like it was just punched out from a sheet of metal. It's basically a glorified saw with tiny little teeth, similar to a serrated knife. It's fine for stuff like soft ripe tomatoes, but it totally sucks for trying to do anything like chopping green onions or chopping herbs.
I got a 10-knives set as a gift from a friend of mine... I don't recognize the brand, but another friend of mine said they're as old as from the 20's!!! And I told myself: "Wow, I've got antiquities in my own house, haha!" Thinking of selling them for a bigger price.
Yeah, I barely use my big Santoku knife but I constantly use the paring knives for everything. I know that the bigger knives have specific purposes but I like the feeling of a smaller knife in my hand and I feel like I have more control with a smaller knife. I could probably give away the 3 biggest knives I own and not miss them.
We recently purchased a knife set. It looks very luxurious. But they aren't just there to look good. My mother's boyfriend is a chef, well he used to be. But he still cooks, and he needed a new knife set. Before we purchased this new knife set though, my mother's boyfriend would find other ways to sharpen the blunter knives that we had.
Well now at least try to sharpen them before you give up all hope for them! Especially if you paid so much. It's not hard to sharpen knives and it is expected that they'll get dull after some time and use. Nothing wrong with that, it just means you need keep on top of your sharpening.
