DadCooksDinner Newsletter - May 2026

Road Trip to Knifewear in Toronto

(Note: This post is not sponsored, I just really enjoyed Knifewear Toronto. There are a few Amazon affiliate links sprinkled in here, but any other links are not affiliate links.)

I’m a fan of Japanese style knives. Over the years, I have alternated between Japanese santoku knives and Western chef’s knives as my workhorse kitchen knife. I went to Japan a few years back and bought an expensive Nakiri, a Japanese vegetable cleaver, hand forged by Yu Kurosaki in Echizen, Japan. “Cleaver” makes it sound thick and heavy. It’s the exact opposite. A Nakiri is thin, nimble, designed for slicing up vegetables, and sharp, sharp, sharp. I’ve never owned a sharper knife. Which is the problem…

I was scared to use it. Not because I might cut myself - my knife skills are pretty good. I worried about the knife getting dull, as all knives do with use. I had no good way to sharpen it again. There is no sharpening service near me that I trust with this fancy of a knife. All the gadgets I’ve bought to sharpen knives are…fine, but I trust them even less than a knife service. I tried years ago to learn how to sharpen by hand, with whetstones, but I never got the hang of it. So I kept the Nakiri in its box, like an heirloom, not a serious kitchen tool. And that’s a shame, because kitchen knives are meant to be used, not displayed like a piece of art. (Even if this one, like most Japanese knives, is both a piece of art and a serious tool.)

I went looking for “how to sharpen your Japanese knife” videos on Youtube, and came across Knifewear, a Japanese knife specialty shop that started in Calgary, Canada. I watched many of their videos (Probably too many. I fell into a Knifewear Youtube hole for a while), I checked out their website, and saw they had a shop in Toronto, about a 5 hour drive from me in Northeast Ohio. And, I saw they had a knife sharpening class. Time for a road trip!

I signed up for their chicken butchery class on day one, and their knife sharpening class on day two. Both classes were fantastic. My main takeaway from the sharpening class was: I need to practice more - a lot more - to get a feel for it. It’s a learned skill, and I wasn’t practicing enough. (The in-person class was a big help; as good as their videos are, I felt like I learned more from being there in person.)

That was last year. I had such a good time that I went back a month ago for their knife skills class, and while I was there I picked up another Yu Kurosaki knife, a gyuto, Japan’s take on a Western chef’s knife. (In my photography hobby there is a disease called “Gear Acquisition Syndrome”, the uncontrollable urge to buy new camera equipment. As you can probably tell, I’ve got it bad, both for camera gear and kitchen gadgets, especially knives.)

Am I using my fancy Nakiri? Well…not as much as I should. I’m still not confident in my sharpening. They gave me a pep talk about practicing with less expensive knives, and told me to bring the Nakiri the next time I visited - knife sharpening is one of the services they provide. And I’m definitely going back, my GAS is kicking up again, and they’ve got a Yakitori butchery & skewering class and Donabe class for me to take. And there is a Yu Kurosaki Santoku I have my eye on...no, stop. I'm backing away from the credit card.

Two quick tips about keeping your knives sharp:

1. Get a ceramic honing rod: Honing rods don’t actually sharpen your knife; what they do is keep the edge straight so the knife stays sharp for longer. When you use a knife, the edge starts to roll over as it bangs into the cutting board. Honing your knife pushes the edge back into position before it rolls over completely. Home cooks who do a lot of knife work should hone their knives at least once a week, about 10 passes on each side of the knife. (Professional chefs hone their knives a lot more often, at least once a day, or when they feel the knife starting to dull.) You want a ceramic honing rod because ceramic is much harder than knife steel. Old-fashioned steel honing rods - the ones with the little ridges along their length - are softer than Japanese knife steel. Steel rods can be cut by the knife you’re trying to hone, which defeats the purpose of honing - they’re making the edge of your knife worse, not better. If you’ve got a metal honing rod lying around from a knife set, replace it with ceramic ASAP.

2. Get your knife sharpened once a year: If you hone your knives regularly, you will only need sharpening once a year or so. If you know how to use whetstones, that’s the best way, but a knife sharpening service is probably the second-best option. Like I said, I’ve tried all sorts of home knife sharpening solutions (electric sharpeners, rolling sharpeners, Spyderco sharpeners, pull through sharpeners), and they’re…fine. Definitely better than nothing, and probably good enough if you’re not a knife fanatic. But I am trying to learn to use a whetstone for a reason.

Is that a sword?

Oh, and about that picture at the top: that’s not a sword. It’s a maguro bocho, a Japanese tuna knife, where the long blade lets them cut fillets from a tuna with one cut. Here’s a Youtube short about how it’s used: Maguro Bocho, The Sword of Sushi Masters​

April Posts Roundup

Here’s what’s new on DadCooksDinner.com this month:

Coriander, Fennel, and Garlic Seasoning Blend

​Coriander Fennel and Garlic Seasoning Blend: My favorite new blend of spices for chicken, pork, fish, and (especially) vegetables, fresh ground from my spice grinder.

Instant Pot Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

​Instant Pot Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic: Join me on the dark side…of the chicken. With lots of garlic. It will keep the vampires away, that’s for sure!

Air Fryer Asparagus

​Air Fryer Asparagus: A quick roasted side dish with my favorite spring vegetable. (It’s even better if you use the CFG seasoning blend from up above.)

Instant Pot Thai Red Beef Curry

​Instant Pot Thai Red Beef Curry: I make lots of curries using this basic technique- a can of coconut milk, a can of Thai curry paste, a protein (beef in this case), and dinner is on the table in no time.

Q&A

Scaling up Bean Mix Soup

Question from reader Marsha:

The only change should be to the ingredient amounts. The recipe is written for a 20 ounce bag, so a 29 ounce bag is (roughly) 50% more of everything. The timings in the recipe stay the same, because it takes the same amount of time to cook each bean no matter how many there are in the pot.

I recommend you scale up all the ingredients, but if it’s too much of a hassle (example: an extra half a can of tomatoes?), here’s the importance of each ingredient:

• Water: This has to be scaled up to 9 cups of water instead of 6 cups, to make sure you have the right amount of liquid for the beans.
• Seasonings: The salt and spices need to scale up by 50% to match the amount of water and beans.
• Vegetables (Onions, carrot, celery, tomatoes): These can be left alone (for a bean-heavy soup) or doubled (for a vegetable-heavy soup) if it is too annoying to increase by 50% - half an onion, half a carrot, half a can of tomatoes seems wasteful.

Wood Utensils In the Dishwasher(!)

And, a question from last month’s newsletter from long-time reader Mike from Austin, (actually, more of a comment):

Ha! Mike, I’m sorry, but I am a monster.

I’m with you on knives (that’s my personal pet peeve, as you can probably tell from the big knife essay above), nonstick cookware, and unglazed ceramics. But, I’m not going to stop throwing my wooden spoons in the dishwasher. I’m trying to be better about oiling my wood utensils, to help protect them, but I’ve got a long way to go. There’s a reason I recommended a teak spoon (the FAAY Right-Hand Chopper), because teak is naturally oily, and stands up to dishwashing better.

Apologies for having feet of clay!

What do you think?

If you have any other ideas about this newsletter, please let me know! Questions, comments, and ideas are welcome. (I can’t promise I’ll do anything with them, but I am definitely open to ideas, since this newsletter is so new.)

Thanks again, and see you next month!

Mike Vrobel - ​DadCooksDinner.com​​

May 1, 2026 (Mayday! Mayday!)