- Joined
- Jan 4, 1999
- Messages
- 3,000
My advice on putting together a kitchen knife kit is to buy a chef knife, a paring knife and a bread knife. The chef knife - pictured above several times - is the basic chopping, dicing and overall cutting tool. Most commercial cooks use the chef knife for more tasks than any other. It is normally used against a cutting board.
The paring knife is the smallest kitchen knife and is used for peeling or cutting very small product. Usually the parer is used in the hand with the product being cut in the other hand.
The bread knife is a long serrated slicer particularly suited to cutting bread. Of course it can be used for slicing virtually anything else as well. This knife is also normally used against a cutting board.
With These three you can handle 90 some odd percent of kitching cutting tasks with the right tool.
You can cut anything with any knife but some knives do some things better than other knives. Cutting a watermelon with a paring knife would be a struggle, as an example. Get these three first and you can go from there as your skill improves and you discover yourself what works best for you.
I also advise against buying sets. They normally result in buying knives you never or rarely use. It is better to spend the money you spend on a set to buy a better quality chef knife.
The best kitchen knives in the industry are made in Japan. This isn't really opinion. You can take it as fact. The reason is that the Japanese employ hard thin blades in their knives and they simply cut better than the softer, thicker blades used everywhere else.
The basic Western style chef knife in Japanese terminology is the gyuto or cow sword. This is a blade originally designed for beef butchery which has all the good qualities of a chef knife. There are some companies that OEM western style chef knives from Japan and these also have hard, thin blades. Shun, global, Tamahagane, Mac and others would fit this category.
The Japanese don't use parer's. The closest thing they have is the "petty" which comes from the French "petit" or small. These are usually what we would call utility knives and are from 4 to 6 inches in blade length. If that's a good size parer for you then you're all set. If not, you can go with the OEM blades from the companies mentioned above and others. My own personal favorite parers are from Al Mar and Kasumi. The Mac are more affordable and excellent.
The Japanese traditional patterns don't include the bread knife either. My personal favorite is the Kasumi and Mac, both of which have long bread knives with some belly to the blade profile. The traditional Japanese slicer for Western style cooking is the suji but suji's like all Japanese traditional patterns are never serrated. You can cut bread just fine with a suji if you have a good edge on it, naturally.
I could go on for weeks so I'll leave it at that. Shop for a great Japanese chef knife or gyuto and then fill in with a bread knife and parer of your choice. That will get you started on the right foot.
The paring knife is the smallest kitchen knife and is used for peeling or cutting very small product. Usually the parer is used in the hand with the product being cut in the other hand.
The bread knife is a long serrated slicer particularly suited to cutting bread. Of course it can be used for slicing virtually anything else as well. This knife is also normally used against a cutting board.
With These three you can handle 90 some odd percent of kitching cutting tasks with the right tool.
You can cut anything with any knife but some knives do some things better than other knives. Cutting a watermelon with a paring knife would be a struggle, as an example. Get these three first and you can go from there as your skill improves and you discover yourself what works best for you.
I also advise against buying sets. They normally result in buying knives you never or rarely use. It is better to spend the money you spend on a set to buy a better quality chef knife.
The best kitchen knives in the industry are made in Japan. This isn't really opinion. You can take it as fact. The reason is that the Japanese employ hard thin blades in their knives and they simply cut better than the softer, thicker blades used everywhere else.
The basic Western style chef knife in Japanese terminology is the gyuto or cow sword. This is a blade originally designed for beef butchery which has all the good qualities of a chef knife. There are some companies that OEM western style chef knives from Japan and these also have hard, thin blades. Shun, global, Tamahagane, Mac and others would fit this category.
The Japanese don't use parer's. The closest thing they have is the "petty" which comes from the French "petit" or small. These are usually what we would call utility knives and are from 4 to 6 inches in blade length. If that's a good size parer for you then you're all set. If not, you can go with the OEM blades from the companies mentioned above and others. My own personal favorite parers are from Al Mar and Kasumi. The Mac are more affordable and excellent.
The Japanese traditional patterns don't include the bread knife either. My personal favorite is the Kasumi and Mac, both of which have long bread knives with some belly to the blade profile. The traditional Japanese slicer for Western style cooking is the suji but suji's like all Japanese traditional patterns are never serrated. You can cut bread just fine with a suji if you have a good edge on it, naturally.
I could go on for weeks so I'll leave it at that. Shop for a great Japanese chef knife or gyuto and then fill in with a bread knife and parer of your choice. That will get you started on the right foot.