£60 ceiling, home cook, and I break down a lot of squash and whole chickens. My current knife is a supermarket stamped thing that goes blunt within a week and rolled at the tip on a butternut last month. I have a cheap pull-through sharpener and I'm willing to learn a stone if that turns out to be the real answer. Not interested in a block set — I want one knife I actually reach for.
Bin the pull-through first. It grinds a fresh, badly angled bevel every time you use it, which is why your knife is blunt again within a week — you're removing steel, not maintaining an edge. A basic combination stone and one afternoon of practice will make your existing supermarket knife outperform a £60 knife that you keep dragging through a carbide V. Do that before you spend anything.
I was slightly afraid somebody would say this.
It's twenty minutes of video and one afternoon of ruining a cheap knife. The knife you buy afterwards will actually stay sharp, which is the thing you're trying to buy.
Different framing that might help: hard, thin Japanese steels hold an edge much longer and chip much more easily. You've told us squash and whole chickens, which is exactly the use case where a tougher, softer European-style blade is the right tool. Save the thin knife for when you own two and can afford to be careful with one of them.
Agreed. I chipped a lovely thin knife on a butternut in the first month and I have never fully forgiven myself or the squash.
Bought a mid-price knife and a cheap double-sided stone in January. The stone changed my cooking more than the knife did. Six months on I sharpen every couple of weeks and it takes four minutes at the sink.
Handle fit matters more than steel at this price. Go somewhere you can hold three of them. I bought the internet's favourite budget knife and the handle was too small for my hand, so I gripped harder to control it, and my hand ached after twenty minutes of prep. Sold it at a loss and bought the boring one that fit.
Also: a cutting board that isn't glass or bamboo. Glass boards destroy an edge faster than anything you'll ever fix on a stone.
@shortcut_sam · 4mo ago
At £60 you're spoilt for choice. The Victorinox Fibrox is the standard answer for good reasons — soft-ish steel that's forgiving to sharpen, a grippy handle that works with wet hands, and it's what a lot of prep kitchens run on. It won't hold an edge like a hard Japanese steel, but it also won't chip on a squash, which is what killed your last one.
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