When chefs sharpen a knife before cutting into veggies and meat, shouldn’t we be concerned of eating microscopic metal shaving residue from the sharpening process?

Question

I always watch cooking shows where the chefs sharpen the knives and then immediately go to cutting the vegetables or meat without first rinsing/washing the knife. Wouldn’t microscopic metal shavings be everywhere and get on the food and eventually be eaten?

In: 5225

Answer 1

We should make a distinction between *honing* and *sharpening*

Honing a blade means that the knife edge has curled or bent slightly. This can easily be fixed, typically by giving a blade a few passes on a honing rod to bend it back into shape. Honing generally doesn’t remove metal from the blade.

Sharpening a blade means the knife edge is actually gone, and you will need to regrind an edge into the metal. This is done on whetstones or specific kinds of sanders. This does remove tiny bits of metal, and takes a fair bit of time to properly form the edge.

Typically on cooking shows you see people honing their blade (again, because no one is going to spend like 20 minutes doing a proper sharpening job), so there’s no (or very miniscule) contamination of the food.