Kitchen Cutlery Storage Options
When you’re cooking, fewer things are more important than having a sharp and pristine knife, especially if you’ve spent a good amount of money on a quality kitchen knife. While knives often take some natural wear and tear from cooking, you can significantly extend the life of your knife by considering how you store them.
Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to take your needs and kitchen setup into consideration. So, if you’re interested in properly protecting your knives, these are the best options.
Knife Block
This is probably the most common method of storing a knife. The knife block is great because it’s simple to use and offers a nice presentation, but there are some potential pitfalls for your knives. First, the block is difficult to clean, so you must make sure the knife is clean and dry before putting it in or some nasty contamination could occur.
Certain knife blocks also dull knives because when you pull them out, the blade slides against the wood. You can combat this by putting the block on its side.
Knife Strip
These magnetic knife strips that you attach to the wall are becoming very trendy because you simply stick your knives onto the strip. The advantages of the knife strip are that there’s not a lot of unnecessary wear on the blade, but the wear is transferred down to the tang because you must pull with some pressure to remove the knife from the strip. This could cause the tang to weaken over time and potentially snap if it’s a low-quality knife.
Another hazard is that it’s more exposed, so you wouldn’t want this in a house with kids because they can easily get to it. Still, the knife strip is a good way to keep your edges sharp.
Knife Bag
Even though you might think this is only for transportation of knives, some chefs highly recommend this for your home kitchen. The reason is that it keeps your knives separated and protected more than any other storage method. Knife bags can be pretty inconvenient for your home though.
Drawer Tray
This storage method is similar to the knife block, except it’s inside your drawer. There are specific places to insert your knife in the drawer, so they don’t rub against one another. The tray is useful because it keeps your knives organized without being displayed, but it still has some of the same downsides as the knife block.
Knife Sheaths
Finally, you can also get sheaths for all your kitchen knives. The sheath allows each knife to be individually protected, but it can be annoying, especially if you have a lot of knives you need to put away. These can also be difficult to clean.