I am not keen on using the old-fashioned honing steel or whetstones to sharpen my knives so when I was offered a chance to try the HORL knife sharpening system I decided my knives deserved the chance to shine again.
The HORL system is made in Germany, by a father and son team Otmar and Timo Horl, and pairs a magnetic angle block which stabilises the knife blade with a rolling sharpener topped with a diamond disc. The system uses two core sharpening angles — 20° and 15° — making it suitable for a wide variety of knives.
It also comes with a ceramic honing disc to refine the edge of a knife.
I tried it out on my “good’’ European chefs’ knife as well as a standard everyday knife, of unknown origins, used at our crib.
The system is easy, just draw a line along the edge of the blade, attach the knife to the stabilising block and roll the sharpener backwards and forwards along the blade until you no longer see the line. It takes just minutes. Then swap out the disc with a quick twist for the ceramic disc and repeat.
The chefs’ knife, which butchered a chicken the night before due to its bluntness, slid a lot more cleanly through pumpkin after sharpening.
It did not work so well on the standard knife, possibly due to its low-grade blade, but it was sharper than before.
Arriving in a handy box, the sharpener is small enough to fit in the back of a drawer or cupboard without taking up too much room.
It is however, quite expensive for the home cook, $289 for the base model and $349 for the HORL3 which I tried, but it is an investment in your tools if you are a keen cook for whom a sharp knife is essential. There is also a premium version at $819.
— The author was gifted the HORL for review.
