Knives - what do you think essential and why?

[Kermit power]

I've seen loads of kitchen knives, and have a fair few myself, but other than a flexible filleting knife I use when I'm butchering deer carcasses I find that I rarely use anything other than a 6" Zelite chef's knife that cost me all of about £30 on Amazon about 5 years ago.

It feels perfectly comfortable for anything from finely slicing cherry tomatoes or dicing shallots upwards, but I'm wondering if I'm missing out on anything?

And yes, whilst I have got a commission cheque doing its best to burn a bit of a hole in my pocket, if a £30 knife can do pretty much all I need for several years, I'm struggling to see what some of the knives I've seen for 10x that price or more truly offer that's worth the extra?

[President Merkin]

Similar. You can get some exquisite knives & I'm all for them, I bought a cheap as chips Kiwi brand medium knife off a tip from some famous chef in the paper & have happily used it for years. It dulls fairly quickly & I sharpen it with my angle grinder

https://www.chopchopchop.co.uk/288.html

[CHLEMCBH]

I'm no chef, and I haven't butchered a deer in, oh, my life. I use a 20cm Wusthoff cook's knife for almost everything. It was a leaving present from a retail job in about 1998 so it's a similar scenario to yours. I have a cheap, slim chinese cleaver type thing I use for carving. My mum brought that back from Peking in 1976 and it's a different shape these days from sharpening but it's a great carving knife. Anything fiddly I've got a wood handled small one that's shaped like a traditional carving knife that I think either came back from a trip to Barcelona in 1992 - purchased for cutting stuff in our picnic lunches, or it's another that was in my mum's kitchen drawers when we cleared them. It's past its best now, so I'll need to source a replacement soon, I guess.

[craigjm]

I have:

8 inch chefs knife
8 inch carving knife
8 inch bread knife
7.5 inch nakiri knife
7 inch santoku knife
3.5 inch paring knife

[grumbledoak]

I have a Hiromoto High Carbon Gyuto 270mm that I use for everything
and an Opinel breadknife

[Mobile Chicane]

I 'get on' with Japanese knives as they suit my style. A 'slider' rather than a 'rocker', so I mostly use:

Global G2 20 cm chef knife for most things
Global GS-37 suntoku for fruit
21cm kiritsuke for very fine veg and fish prep - it's a cutlass which I'm surprised I can legally own

But I also use a Wusthof Classic 14cm boning knife, since ze Germans hev ze heft that Japanese knives don't.

The answer is that you don't need a 'set'. Most won't get used.

Find what you like in the hand and go with that. Keep them sharp.

[Scabutz]

I use:

Bread Knife
Carving Knife
Chefs Knife
Boning Knife

Don't like small fiddly knives.

[Kermit power]

craigjm said:

I have:

8 inch chefs knife
8 inch carving knife
8 inch bread knife
7.5 inch nakiri knife
7 inch santoku knife
3.5 inch paring knife

Do you actually use them all?

I've ordered one of these to try alongside my chef's knife because I've seen so many people saying how good they are for onions - the thing I prep more often than anything else! - but I just never use my paring knives at all, for example.

[craigjm]

Kermit power said:

craigjm said:

I have:

8 inch chefs knife
8 inch carving knife
8 inch bread knife
7.5 inch nakiri knife
7 inch santoku knife
3.5 inch paring knife

Do you actually use them all?

I've ordered one of these to try alongside my chef's knife because I've seen so many people saying how good they are for onions - the thing I prep more often than anything else! - but I just never use my paring knives at all, for example.

I use the paring knife most of all and then the chefs, carving and bread knife. The two Japanese style knives get used less often depending on what I am making.

I agree with mobile chicane you don’t need a set and keep them sharp. Mine are all Japanese so 16 degrees on the sharpener

[thebraketester]

170mm Santoku. I can do 99.99% of things with that. That would be my "one knife kitchen" choice.

I would go Victorinox if I had to kit myself out with a few knives. They are brilliant. And cheap.

[daqinggregg]

If you’re an Asian auntie/uncle, there is only one knife required;



Irrespective, of butchering a cow or prepping spring rolls.

[Aunty Pasty]

I have multiple knives but if I was to reduce it down to the essentials, I'd say:

- A chefs knit for most prepping
- A bread knife for bread and cakes
- A cleaver for quartering up whole birds.

I also have utility knives, carving knives and paring knives but the same job can be done with the chefs knife as they have a similar edge.

Edited by Aunty Pasty on Thursday 2nd May 06:33

[w00tman]

Get a set of plastic-handle Victorinox knives as a good way to keep them sharp. I've seen them used in multi-Michelin starred restaurants and they are a solid choice. Often, people will then add one "exceptional" knife - this is where you can blow the budget, but the heavy lifting is done with the plastic ones

[carinatauk]

I use the following:

Cleaver
Paring
Nakiri
Semi flexible filleting

In fairness the cleaver will do everything, the paring knife for the fiddly bits, Nakiri for everything but stuff with bones [chips to easily]. Like you I dissect deer carcasses with a fillet knife and butchers saw

[Kermit power]

carinatauk said:

I use the following:

Cleaver
Paring
Nakiri
Semi flexible filleting

In fairness the cleaver will do everything, the paring knife for the fiddly bits, Nakiri for everything but stuff with bones [chips to easily]. Like you I dissect deer carcasses with a fillet knife and butchers saw

I really must get myself one of those, since at the moment I just use a standard hacksaw which isn't great.... More importantly, I have one of these in the garage...



...and with every new carcass I do, it gets just a little harder to persuade myself that cleaning it out before and after would actually be more effort than using the hacksaw!

[RustyMX5]

I've got a vast array of knives but by and large I use:

Chefs Knife
Paring Knife
Small Deba
Larger Deba
Bread knife

To be honest, the small Deba could easily be replaced by the large Deba.

I'm tempted to having a go at making a Nakiri.

[shirt]

craigjm said:

I have:

8 inch chefs knife
8 inch carving knife
8 inch bread knife
7.5 inch nakiri knife
7 inch santoku knife
3.5 inch paring knife

yes but do you use them?

i have a 9in , 7in and 5in santoku profiled knives, a 9in filleting knife, a 3.5in paring, a bread knife and a cleaver. mostly damascus blades, and i have the matching carving set and sharpener [oooOOOOooo]

i would say the 7in santoku does 90% of the work [i'm also a slider]. the paring now and again, and then the bread knife for toast. rare to use the others. they look nice i guess.

i was thinking whether to reduce the number as i saw a droolworthy 3 knife combo the other day. pretty and frivolous as mine are thoroughly decent, but then looked at the individual prices and reckon i would be best suited to a pair of schmancy 7in santoku's and an ikea bread knife.

Edited by shirt on Thursday 2nd May 14:29

[RizzoTheRat]

I became a big fan of a Santoku when renting a place that came with an Ikea branded one, it was great. I subsequently bought one from a local decent kitchen knife and it doesn't keep it's edge quite as well, but that may be due to my wife rather than the knife!

[Lotobear]

I decided to buy just one 'knife for life' last year and went for this:

https://cuttingedgeknives.co.uk/collections/sakai-...

It does everything I want and is beautifuly made. A couple of drags of a ceramic steel every once in a while keeps the blade super sharp - never had to use a wet stone on it yet.

It's a really nice thing to own

[carinatauk]

Kermit power said:

carinatauk said:

I use the following:

Cleaver
Paring
Nakiri
Semi flexible filleting

In fairness the cleaver will do everything, the paring knife for the fiddly bits, Nakiri for everything but stuff with bones [chips to easily]. Like you I dissect deer carcasses with a fillet knife and butchers saw

I really must get myself one of those, since at the moment I just use a standard hacksaw which isn't great.... More importantly, I have one of these in the garage...



...and with every new carcass I do, it gets just a little harder to persuade myself that cleaning it out before and after would actually be more effort than using the hacksaw!

Not sure what blade your using with the hacksaw, I used to use 8 tpi and it was equally as good as the butchers saw