June 21, 2019
BY ELLIOTT BELL
Serrated knives are the only piece of kitchen cutlery that will still work adequately when the blades are dull. The serrated edge of the knife owes its slicing ability to more than just sharpness.
The high points of the serrations come into contact with what you’re cutting first. These points apply higher pressure to the material than a non-serrated blade. The high points are able to puncture the surface. It’s why a serrated knife will grab and slice through the skin of a tomato, yet a tomato skin can resist all but the sharpest of non-serrated blades.
How long can a quality serrated knife go without sharpening? When properly used a serrated knife will perform well for years — especially if you only end up using it as a bread knife.
But over time, even a well-designed serrated knife like Misen’s will need to be sharpened.
Sharpening a serrated knife is not as easy as returning the razor edge to your chef’s knife.
People unfamiliar with how to sharpen them — when it’s finally time — are guided by the misconception that it’s better to buy an inexpensive and low-quality serrated knife, and just toss it in the garbage when it obviously isn’t doing the job anymore. This is a huge mistake and waste of money.
Sidestep this disposable approach. Buy a quality serrated knife made of high-carbon steel. It’ll reward you with better edge retention, meaning it’ll need sharpening less often than the cheap ones you’ll have to regularly replace. It’ll take even longer — years — before you’ll have to sharpen the serrated blade.
A serrated knife probably isn’t going to be used as much as the kitchen workhorses you have, such as your chef’s knife or paring knife. The serrations help protect the sharp edges residing in the gullets between the points, which don’t make full contact with the cutting board. For perspective, think of how many times the edge of your chef’s knife meets up with the cutting board.
The recessed part of the serrations are chisel ground into the blade. This means that the back side of the blade is flat, and the serrations are ground at an angle — just like a chisel. Over time, these chiseled edges will become dull, especially the high points that make first contact. The knife will still cut because the serrated edge can still catch and rip through the surface. Plus, the recessed gullets dull slower. You’ll have to press a lot harder, though, with a serrated knife that needs sharpening. You might not notice the difference until you resharpen the blade.
A quality serrated knife will continue to perform after years of use — but have you noticed lately that it’s not easy to get those beautifully symmetrical bread slices? And yes, now that you mention it, there are more crumbs and food morsels left on the cutting board than there used to be. These are signs that it’s time to sharpen this essential kitchen knife so that it will do a better job.
Sharpening your serrated knife will reduce the amount of pressure you put on the knife to get the teeth to catch and rip through the surface. Cut a few slices from a crusty loaf of bread with a dull serrated knife. Then sharpen the knife. You’ll see a dramatic reduction in crumbs.
You can do it yourself with the right tools, and it’s not a difficult task if you have a quality knife that was manufactured with the intent to be re-sharpened rather than discarded.
Electric knife sharpeners may not work on serrated blades.
Sharpening a serrated knife is not as easy as returning the razor sharp edge to your chef’s knife. Many people prefer to have serrated knife sharpening done by a professional. Some companies like Misen, offer an incredibly easy mail-in knife sharpening solution that enables you to safely mail your knives to a professional who will quickly restore your blades back to their original glory, for a small cost.
One of the reasons why people prefer to have someone else sharpen a serrated knife is because the best method requires each serration to be sharpened separately. Let’s use our knife as an example. It features 33 serrations — not something you’ll whip through in just a couple of minutes.
Do you have an electric knife sharpener? It may have a slot specifically designated for serrated knives. However, lower end sharpeners likely won’t feature this option. Some motorized sharpeners will only touch the tip of the serrations. They could also damage the bevel by sharpening both sides of the blade with the fixed angle of the internal grinding disks.
Deluxe electric sharpeners use sharpening surfaces mounted on spring-action bars that conform to the shape and angle of a serrated blade, but even a high-end electric knife sharpener may have trouble reaching the entire surface of the concave gullets. There is no such thing as an automatic serrated knife sharpener. A manual approach will give you better results.
We don’t suggest you do it yourself. The easiest and safest way is to let a professional like Misen handle it. But if you want to tackle this challenge yourself you’ll need the right tools. The right tool for manually sharpening your serrated knife is a ceramic honing rod, like this one that also has a nice guide angle built in to help you achieve the right stroke angle.. The shape of the rod is designed to fit inside the serrations of the blade. You’ll use it to sharpen the knife, tooth by tooth.
Start at the back end of the knife. Place the ceramic sharpening rod in the serrated grove, which is also known as the gullet. Position the rod so it matches the beveled angle of the chiseled cut you see in the gullet. Finding this angle isn’t difficult because the gullets of a serrated knife make the bevel easier to see. If you hold the sharpening rod flush with the bevel, you’ll automatically have the correct angle.
Slide the rod through the gullet toward the edge of the blade that does the cutting. Do this for each gullet. It should only take a few passes for each one. Resharpening the gullets with a honing rod also helps to reestablish sharp tips on the teeth. That’s important because the teeth make the initial entry into the material and begin the cut.
Once you’ve used the ceramic rod to sharpen each gullet, it’s time to turn over the knife for the last step. Sharpening a knife removes minute amounts of steel. Sometimes these remain partially attached to the blade and are known as burrs. You’ll be able to feel them if you gently run your finger along the backside of the blade. (Remember that on most serrated knives, this side is flat.) You’re sharpening it if you feel these burs. You’ve used the ceramic to draw metal up and over the edge of the knife blade.
These burrs can be easily removed by moving the flat side of the knife across the surface of the fine-grit finishing stone of a sharpening stone. There you go. You’ve sharpened one of the most useful and important knives in your kitchen.
Call it a bread knife, or call it a serrated knife — just don’t call it un-sharpenable. A quality serrated knife can be sharpened because it was crafted from stronger steel and designed to be maintained instead of thrown away. When the time comes, it’ll be better for you to sharpen it yourself or send it out for professional sharpening. That way, you can hang on to your trusty knife for a long time to come.
Misen’s professional mail-in sharpening starts at $10 a knife, which for a knife that will last forever, is a great deal.
