Jim Davis: Hi there, Chef, Jim Davis here for Harris Teeter. I'm going to show you now how to use various handheld sharpening devices for your kitchen knives. This is a standard typical sharpening device that you can pick up in almost any kitchen goods store. Hold it firmly with your left hand and pull your knife down, place your knife so that it leans up against the side that, the angles are set so that they pull the correct angle on your knife blade. And just pull your knife through and then at the other angle and pull it through. And do this at least three or four times. Now remember, when you're sharpening a knife like this, you are removing a little bit of steel each time. So you don't want to do this everyday. You only want to do when it really needs it. And then you can hold and see if the knife is sharp enough. And if it is, then you take your honing steel and you wrap out the rough edges. Smooth out the rough edges a little bit and that's the way you use that device. Now if you are using a Japanese knife like this one, the Japanese chef's knife, this is called a Fiskar Roll-Sharp. It's got two little carbide rollers in here. And what you do is you just run your knife, back and forth about ten or fifteen times. And typically you need to do this maybe every week or two. While with the honing steel, you need to use the honing steel every time you use your knife. And that is how you use that handheld device. Now I'm going to show you the electric knife sharpener. These are wonderful instruments. Just be sure that you don't overuse it. Again every time you use this knife sharpener, you're going to be removing steel from your blade. This is a three step sharpener. So we're going to take the blade through three different steps, because they also make a racket, but we're going to set it down so that it sets in there and follows the correct angle, all the way down. That's stage one.

Now we go to the next one and we do stage two. We do that two or three times on each side. Don't push your blade down in too hard like I did because you can curl the grinding wheels. And over here about three or four times, the same way. And then we go to the end section which has ceramic honing devices on them. And this just smoothes the edge out and three more times on each side. Now let's see if we've improved that one any, oh my! Look at that. That's how you use handheld and electric knife sharpeners. And next, I'm going to talk with you about maintaining your knives.