I’ve been watching the prices for Ceramic knives for years. They used to be exotic and ridiculously expensive. I won’t pay $75 and up for one knife.
Prices have dropped to under $30.
This knife will only be used for prepping chicken and beef for cooking. Hand wash and dried. Kept in its sheath.
My most common task will be butterflying chicken and trimming fat from beef.
How fragile are these knives? Sometimes I accidentally buy a ribeye oy NY Strip that has a bone. They don’t cook evenly and I need to cut out the bone prior to cooking.
Any suggestions? Are they generic or are there brands I should focus on?
I don’t know about them not being durable enough for everyday use. I usually grab the appropriate one from our set unless it’s dirty, then I’ll revert to the steelies. I haven’t damaged one yet. Their rigidity allows you to slice things really thin by hand.
They dark side of them being more rigid is that they are less strong. My brother-in-law snapped one in half when he tried to demonstrate that they don’t flex. Don’t try to pry a joint loose with one. Similar to a screwdriver, don’t use it as a pry bar or chisel.
I have two. They are pretty fragile, and I’ve lost the tip of each of them. (One dropped. I don’t recall how the other tip was broken.)
They are also very rigid. I prefer a more flexible knife for something like boning chicken. I have a fancy steel knife that I only use for meat that I rarely sharpen because I never cut things that would dull it. Basically, I use it for butterflying lamb and boning chicken.
What the ceramic knives are awesome for is slicing tomatoes and onions. Paper thin slices, and I never need to sharpen them. For for, say, peeling apples I prefer a more flexible regular paring knife. But I like the ceramic for chopping ginger, because the fibrous ginger dulls my steel knives too quickly. I sometimes use it for peeling ginger, because I plan to use it for chopping, but honestly, it has the same “more rigid than I want” problem there, too.
Anyway, I really like my ceramic knives, but don’t recommend them for what you want to use them for.
Oh, if you mostly want to cut thin even slices from boneless meat, ceramic knives will work very well. They are also very easy to clean, because nothing sticks to them.
The best knife for slicing tomatoes is one with a serrated blade, like this one for $7.00. It basically requires no sharpening and is cheap enough that when it finally does, you can just throw it away.
For the OP’s sharpening woes, I’d suggest an AccuSharp. Simple construction, simple use. Just place the knife on a counter, edge up, and stroke with the tool three or four times. This is a great tool for reestablishing the edge on your dull knives, as it removes quite a bit of steel. Ideally, you’d use a chef’s steel in between edge restorations, but it’s not required.
You can sharpen any of your household knives. All you need to be able to do is hold the knives vertical.
I’ve lots of knife sharpening gear including motor driven belt units and I keep this in the kitchen for regular use. You can even sharpen your scissors.
I used to take my kitchen knives to the mall. They had a booth selling knives. He’d sharpen knives for a small fee. It’s closed now.
I got interested in ceramic because they are so factory sharp and they hold that edge a long time.
My mom had a can opener with a knife sharpener wheel. It took off a lot of metal getting a knife sharp. It did ok, the edge was pretty course. The knives wore out pretty quick.
I have one of those, but for someone who is admittedly flummoxed by sharpeners, I thought I’d go with something simple. The Spyderco requires you to be able to hold the knife close to vertical to obtain a good edge. Not everyone has the hand/eye coordination or the patience to learn. It’s also five times more expensive.
My dad’s brother collected knives as a hobby. He was into all the woo of sharpening. Oil, multiple stones, ceramic rods, leather strop. Made my head spin. It took him years to get really good at sharpening.
He wouldn’t loan anybody a knife for five mins. You’ll damage the edge. The ultra honed edges were very delicate. I tried to get him to sharpen my cheap pocket knife. He wouldn’t touch it. Had a chrome edge (or something like that) that wouldn’t sharpen and keep an edge.
I’ll get a sharpener. I still need metal knives in the kitchen.
The sharpener you recommended actually scrapes metal off the edge, which I’m sure you know. It just grates on my sensibilities to see something like that in use. That said, I do have something similar I use on yard tools.
The biggest thing I found about ceramic knives, is to be very careful around bones. They are sharp enough the edge will slice into it a little bit before you notice. Then the ceramic edge being pretty brittle, especially down that thin on edge, it is susceptible to breaking out a tiny little chip if the edge biting into the bone is twisted or pulled sideways, or anything other than taken back out straight.
Ceramic can be quite fragile. Depending on what you are filleting, you don’t want the knife to be overly sharp or bitingly serrated. For fish it can cut into the bone too much. As far as sharpening, I use a big flat stone that I got for my chisels.
The ultra honed edges were very delicate. I tried to get him to sharpen my cheap pocket knife. He wouldn’t touch it. Had a chrome edge (or something like that) that wouldn’t sharpen and keep an edge.