My tools serve me, not the other way around. It’s not worth the time and effort to wash by hand or sharpen on a whetstone. I don’t need an expensive knife to cook at home. A pull through sharpener and honing steel are adequate. Get the right material and you don’t have to worry about the metal in the dishwasher.
I use knives I have pilfered from various places I have worked at and they are around 10 - 40 years old, some are really good knives though. I have ever only used 2 pull through sharpeners and the current one is maybe 15 years old. I have also only washed my knives in a dishwasher as long as I have had access to one, so like 20 years, and there has been no noticeable difference.
I also have a cast iron pan that’s at least 40 years old, I commonly wash it in the dishwasher and it’s indestructible. If it gets some rust on it I just scrape it off with steel wool and add a little oil. It works as well as it did 40 years ago. People are way too anal about kitchen tools.
I’m pretty sure the idea that a dishwasher can ruin a knife or a cast iron pan is a myth that too many people have bought into.
Maybe you got lucky or I got unlucky, but cast iron plus dishwasher equals having to reseason from scratch for me
That’s just adding a bit of oil and spreading it over the surface with a piece of paper, takes like 10 seconds. I have done that after washing it for 40 years and it works as well as anything I found people saying online.
Some insane people insist on sticking it in an oven with bacon grease or something but as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t do anything more than just adding a bit of oil and leaving it alone. I did that once and felt completely ridiculous for wasting so much time for the same result.
You can either do it slowly by just cooking with it over and over to get the layer of polymerized oil or you put on a thin layer and bake it on there to do it the fast way
Or do it the really fast way and just oil it with zero heat
I initially assumed this was unpopular because “just wipe the knives off…” and “why sharpen them at all?”. Boy am I surprised.
Translation: I’m wasteful
Not with my time.
I generally touch up my knives every few weeks. It takes me about 45 seconds per knife on a whetstone and a strop. Add another 30 seconds if you want for grabbing the whetstone and splashing it with water first if you want.
What about serrated knives? Asking for a friend…
Only the bread knife.
The detergent in the dishwasher is extremely corrosive. Most kinds of metal can’t stand it, and you see the general result (rust) after just one try. So, if your knives are OK with it once, they are OK with it all times.
But: they are going to loose sharpness much quicker. You will have to sharpen them more often. I guess you are OK with that, too.
How does a dishwasher dull a knife?
I run my steak knives through it all the time, they get sharpened 1/4 as often (or less, like 2x a year) as my hand washed chef’s knife, which could be sharpened every week (it’s a very good Henckels set).
Placebo problems created by hyperfocusing on one thing (knife sharpness) leading to bullshit flying around
Nonsense. I’ve put all my various knives in the dishwasher for years and there is zero visible rust on them. Every few months i use a sharpener on them and they’re super sharp again.
Most people almost never sharpen their knives so from that standpoint using a pull through sharpener is already an improvement. Dishwasher I don’t understand however. If I always put my kitchen knife into the diswasher after use I’d never be able to use it because it would be constantly in there. Instead I just quickly scrub it under hot water from the tap and dry it with a towel. Takes me 15 seconds and it’s ready for next use and stays razor sharp for months.
If I always put my kitchen knife into the diswasher after use I’d never be able to use it because it would be constantly in there.
The solution is to have more than 1 knife. So while there is one in the dishwasher from yesterday, you have at least one more clean one that will go into the dishwasher tonight after you use it.
Instead I just quickly scrub it under hot water from the tap and dry it with a towel. Takes me 15 seconds and it’s ready for next use and stays razor sharp for months.
It takes more than 15 seconds for hot water to come out of my kitchen facet. My dishwashered knives are still plenty sharp to cut through the fresh produce that is their primary use. After about 10 or 15 years the handle may may crack and deteriorate from dishwasher usage. I’ll buy another knife. A decent knife isn’t that expensive.
I have a dishwasher that has silicone inserts for knifes. But i also hand sharpen my knifes a lot, someone i’d rather sharpen a knife for 15 minutes than cleaning it from hand.
Huh. I expected to wander in here and see people confused about why this is on unpopularopinion. I’m apparently a repulsive philistine. A meteorite-forged knife sharpened on daylight is a joy to use, but you can also just buy cheap stamped knives, do basic maintenance, and spend your mental capital elsewhere if you want.
This is the second thread I’ve seen today with contentious talk about sharpening knives, and I have to ask both sides: do none of you live near a knife sharpening place? I pay EUR 5 per knife two to three times a year, and my knives are always sharp.
Dull knives are dangerous and make prep real chore.
That’s a possibility. I’ve seen mobile sharpeners that have a trailer with their equipment in it and they also frequent farmers markets. There’s also places where you can just mail your knives to and they’ll send them back like they’ve just had some milk plus.
You’re a monster.
Thank you 😊
I can’t say whether this is unpopular broadly, but it sure is unpopular with me.
Grind up a whetstone and put the powder in the dishwasher
This method also yields plates that you can use to play Decapitation Frisbee ™.
The real ultimate frisbee.
New Olympic Sport Unlocked
Pvp Olympics
That implies PvE Olympics
Lol, you’re a twisted one. Have my upvote.
Mine don’t go through the dishwasher only because the plastic in the handles would get fucked up. Otherwise they’re stainless, how does a dishwasher harm the stainless in my knives but not my stainless silverware, stainless bowls, stainless utensils, stainless dishwasher?
And I use an electric sharpener. I ain’t wasting time with a stone - I did plenty of that 45 years ago. Tech has moved along. Does anyone think Wustoff sharpens their knives by hand?
You know there’s a million different alloys that are all “stainless steel” right?
As far as some more specifics, nothing else you made is meant to hold a sharp edge, so they aren’t made of heat treated tool steel. Making a knife is a balance between having softer metal that dulls more quickly, vs harder metal that chips or cracks more easily.
Another feature you’ll notice on your stainless steel knives is a sharp edge, which is much more delicate than the blunt edges on everything else you listed. The thinness of the edge, combined with the metal being hardened so it can retain an edge, make it so you’re reasonably likely to chip the edges of many nicer (better heat treated) knives due to stuff knocking around in the dishwasher. Also you’re somewhat likely to damage the coating of the dishwasher racks with the sharp edges.
Also, probably not Wusthof, but some high end knives are, in fact, hand sharpened even in factory settings still. It doesn’t take very long on a wheel or belt really, though if you don’t count that as hand sharpening then yeah that’s a definitions disagreement.
No shit, again, tell me how the dishwasher harms my stainless knives? And I could tell you the exact stainless my knives are, as well as my cookware, and my bowls. I’ve done TONS of research on my kitchen gear. It’s also supposedly bad to wash my stainless cookware too, hasn’t hurt it yet - the dishwasher runs between 1 and 3 times a day, we cook so much.
I’ve tested multiple brands (with different stainless, the big difference is the nickel percentage) and none have been affected - they don’t even stain.
I’ve washed my steak knives from the same set that I’ve had for 10 years now - you can’t tell the difference, they get sharpened about 1/4 as often as my chef’s knife, because I use it all the time.
Seriously, it’s stainless fucking steel, that was forged and tempered at temperatures far beyond the 200 degrees of a dishwasher. What is it exactly about the dishwasher that supposedly fucks up my knives that aren’t fucked up from the dishwasher? (And I use cheap-as powder detergent, the cheapest I can find, and my shit comes out clean).
Now I wouldn’t run a carbon steel knife through the dishwasher, because it would have a bad reaction with the detergent, and it would rust which I’d then have to cleanup.
Watch ProjectFarm’s latest video on the best kitchen knives sets.
Some of them rust in the dish washer, and some not cheap ones.
It’s fine to doubt. It’s NOT fine to be confidantly wrong. Fucking LISTEN when someone fucking tells you the correct answers.
I didn’t say anything about the heat treat or anything, specifically because, like you said, the dishwasher isn’t reaching temperatures where that matters.
I also didn’t try to claim that your detergent would rust your knives. This is literally all just you.
All I said at the end of the day, is that your knife edge is more delicate that everything else you’re comparing it to, and your dishwasher can bang it against things which may chip it somewhat, unlike everything else you’re comparing the knives to.
Oh look honey the Neanderthals are on the internet now
You’re just jealous of our prominent brows.
Lmao
My tools serve me, not the other way around
Legit take. Why buy extremely expensive knife just to babysit it? Just get an okay knife and sharpen it once in a while whether by whetstone or grinder, and knife doesn’t need to be razor sharp to function nicely.
Unless OP is getting a few thousand dollar japanese hand-crafted chef knife and then run it with dish washer and knife grinder, then i’d say it’s sensible.
Another one is cast iron pan, i’ve seen tons of people teaching others to use it and then proceed to explain it in such convoluted way that’s basically babying the thing. It’s indestructible, guys, you don’t need to season it everytime before and after use.
knife doesn’t need to be razor sharp to function nicely
No, but if it’s not razor sharp after sharpening then it wasn’t sharpened properly and it’ll be dull again in a week. Properly apexed edge with the burr removed stays razor sharp for months. Improperly sharpened knife cuts well for a week because you’re cutting with the burr but after it bends you’ve got to resharpen it again.
I have some expensive ass knifes and i started to realise that i don’t use them too often just because they were expensive. My favourite knife is a victorinox knife that i sniped for 10 dollars. Second to that is a spiderco for 23 dollars. Both really good knifes
Every kitchen should have a workhorse set of Victorinox, imo. Get a fancy knife to compliment that, if you like.
I was surprised to find that Dawn dish soap doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on my cast iron skillet which gets near daily use.
The reason people used to not use soap on cast iron skillets is because soap used to have lye in it which would strip the seasoning from the skillet, most dish soap today does not contain lye and should be used to help properly clean the cast iron.
Also whenever I am helping someone with a new cast iron I always tell them not to worry too much about ruining the seasoning, because I have tried to strip a skillet of its seasoning completely by hand and it was so hard to get it all off
Our household has amazing sets of Henckels knives that are in perfect condition from careful handwashing, professional sharpening…and because they almost never get used. We also have a few relatively inexpensive knives that get use all the time because they go in the dishwasher after use.
