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This simple trick lets you sharpen a knife without a sharpener

Every spring I look forward to the weekend that empty stalls at my neighborhood farmer's market transform into a colorful bouquet of delicious bounty.

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The tasty new vegetables are a perfect excuse to dust off my chef's knives and get to work on a delicious recipe.

But there's a special kind of hell in trying to slice a tomato — or any food really — with a dull knife.

tomato sushi 2
Tomato Sushi

Seasoned chefs generally keep a sharpening stone or rod at the ready at all times for this reason.

But if you're in a pinch and your knife sharpener is lying at the bottom of an unpacked box or, even worse, doesn't even exist, there's actually a super simple way to sharpen your knife with no special tools.

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In a YouTube video for their Reactions Channel, The American Chemical Society shows that you can use something as simple as a plate, a mug, or really any porcelain serving ware as long as it has a rough edge on the bottom.

All you have to do is flip over the plate, run the edge of the knife along the rough edge of the plate at a 20-degree angle, repeat on the other side, and then rinse under water to flush away the tiny errant metal particles.

sharpen knife procelain youtube acs
American Chemical Society/YouTube

This and other sharpening techniques utilize friction to get the edge of your steel blade as thin and finely pointed as possible. The thinner the metal along the edge, the sharper the knife.

The type and sharpness of your knife to begin with will dictate how often and how many passes you take while sharpening. For instance, Japanese knives require a slightly different sharpening technique than Western knives.

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But in general, you'll have to do more passes along the edge if your knife is extremely dull, and less if it's pretty sharp to begin with.

Two words of caution, though: Make sure that you always run the knife in the same direction for each pass. Also don't lie the face of your knife completely flat against the rough edge of porcelain or else it will get scratched.

For more tips and tricks on knife sharpening, check out the full video by the American Chemical Society:

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