Eden kitchen knives and knife sharpening

After I started living on my own in Rotterdam in 2013, I spent much more time in the kitchen. Soon I realized that kitchen knives are very important tools. Cheap knives are often blunt or get blunt quickly. This makes cutting work slower and more frustrating. It also makes it less safe, because blunt knives are prone to slide off certain vegetables, which is dangerous for your fingers. In my search for better kitchen knives which were not expensive, I found the knives of Eden, the house brand of Knives and Tools. This is a web shop based in the Netherlands which also has websites to serve customers in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

I bought their Eden Classic VG10 chef’s knife and paring knife, which are respectively 20 cm and 9 cm long. VG10 is a designation for the type of steel, diverse steel types give knives subtly different properties. The chef’s knife is the most flexible knife, best used to cut up large pieces of food quickly. The paring knife is used for finer cutting work. I think these are the only two knives which are essential, but you could add a bread knife.

The chef’s knife features a design similar to more expensive knives, for the price of about € 50. It also has good ergonomics. The sole problem was that this knife, just like the paring knife, was quite blunt out of the box. This was evident in the relatively difficulty it had with cutting tomatoes and how it launched pieces of onion. This surprised me, but fortunately I could sharpen the knives with the Japanese waterstones, which I purchased together with the knives for approximately € 50.

Knives and Tools was so helpful to create elaborate instructions (only in Dutch for now) with good videos to explain how knives can be sharpened with waterstones. At first I did not succeed with this, my knives stayed blunt even after grinding them over the stones for many minutes. I remember that I discussed the subject with someone who had trained to become a chef. He told me that he and many others simply had no affinity with sharpening on stones, which is why some cooks outsource sharpening to professional knife sharpeners.

I was discouraged, but I kept trying. Only in the first half of this year I figured out that I had used a fine waterstone too soon; the coarser waterstone with 200 and 800 grid should be used first to remove more material from the knife. Initially I had not done so because I understood that this coarser stone is only necessary for knives with a damaged edge. After doing so I finally started to notice results. Ideally the knife should be able to shave off the hair on my arms like in the videos. I can’t sharpen my knife to such an extent yet, but I’ve gotten the hang of it.

I concluded that I now have two good knives and waterstones which can last me several decades for a bit more than € 100. The alternative, buying low quality knives more often or sending them to a professional knife sharpener for maintenance, is more expensive. Sharpening knives yourself has a learning curve, but I can recommend most people to learn this and spend some money on good knives and water stones.

Unfortunately the Eden Classic VG10 series is no longer produced and mostly sold out in the web shop of Knives and Tools. That’s why I’d recommend to buy the Eden Classic Damast series now that it’s discounted. It’s practically identical to the VG10 series, only the looks are slightly different because of the pattern welded steel. The Eden Essentials which is supposed to replace the Classic VG10 series does not compare to the quality of its predecessor. It looks cheap because it doesn’t have a recessed bolster to separate the plastic of the handle from the blade of the knife. The plastic handle abruptly ends where the blade begins, while the VG10 and Classic Damast knives have a wider piece of steel between the handle and the blade.

I fear the Classic Damast series won’t be replaced when it’s sold out, either. In that case you would have to look at knives from other brands, which are generally more expensive. If you do, make sure they also feature a recessed bolster rather than an extended one. An extended bolster has a thicker piece of steel extending all the way to the heel of the blade, this is a pain if you want to sharpen the knife on a stone. Because you can’t grind off the material of the thick heel on a stone, it will eventually lose pace with the rest of the blade’s edge. Then you’ll have to ask a professional sharpener to remove that part of the heel, because the knife will become unusable otherwise.

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