Kitchen knife uses

A

augostos

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Sep 15, 2011
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I'm planning to make a very small family of kitchen knives.

Was looking at Japanese knives recently. I think I got the point with intended uses: where santoku, nakiri and such are applied.

But when and how the kitchen knives should be used?

For example, take a chef (santoku, gyuto...) knife. Are you supposed to use it for all the tasks and products? Indiscriminately for row meat, veggies, fruits and etc? Same with utility knife (the one a little smaller than chef knife).

Are there some rules regarding how to control/separate the usage? Maybe there should be two sets of knives or some similar idea.

Thank you!
 
Start learning how to cook and prepare meals using examples of those knives. I say that because if you did, you would intuitively match a blade profile to a usage scenario. Is there carryover between say a gyuto and a santoku? Sure there is. I will inject my own experience into this. I am not a pro chef, but I helped manage a Japanese restaurant owned by my in-laws for years. Hence, I was privy to observe the different knives in use by the cooks in the back of the house versus those wielded by the sushi chefs up front. Cooks preferred cleavers and 240mm gyutos. Sushi chefs were all about their 270mm yanagibas for fish and 210mm gyutos for vegetable prep. No petty/paring or nakiri to be found anywhere, the 210mm gyuto was all that was required. Their skill level and experience allowed them to perform very fine work with nothing else. But what everyone liked to use at home was split between a 180mm santoku or a 210mm gyuto as the centerpiece with a 90mm petty/paring and a 240mm sujihiki on the side. Thus, my personal trifecta of a 90mm petty/paring, a 210mm gyuto and a 240mm sujihiki was given root. I have since added other offerings such as a 130mm Ko-Bunka in lieu of a santoku, but the mainstay in our home (versus commercial kitchen) for over a decade has remained the trifecta.
 
If you are going to make a series of kitchen knives, I would suggest REALLY understanding what they are used for, how they are used, and what elements of their design make them suited to the tasks they perform.

I think that is going to take a lot more than just asking....it's going to take a lot of you using them.

It's as if you are making a skinner and you have never skinned anything.
 
marcinek said:
If you are going to make a series of kitchen knives, I would suggest REALLY understanding what they are used for, how they are used, and what elements of their design make them suited to the tasks they perform.

I think that is going to take a lot more than just asking....it's going to take a lot of you using them.

It's as if you are making a skinner and you have never skinned anything.
Click to expand...
Good advice.
I use a 8" chef's knife for almost everything. (beware the man with only one knife:))
6" utility for the small stuff.
Sometimes I will use the santoku or paring because they look lonely.

Wanted to add that sometimes I wish I had a 10" chefs.
Also, I'm no chef. A kitchen hack at best but I'm trying to learn.
 
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Gyutos (chef) and Santokus are all purpose knives. This are suitable for pretty much any task on a cutting board. If you are going to buy high end ones, do not use them on frozen food or near/at the bone. You will most likely chip the hardened blade.

Utility and paring knives are all purpose "off board" knives. Peeling, opeing packages, removing silver skin, trimming - all good.

Then there are many specialized knives which I can go over but for western style cooking the above choices will cut it.

I would also add a german "beater" chef knife for frozen food or other hard cutting tasks and a bread knife if you cut a lot of bread.
 
I use a French carbon steel 10 inch chef knife for most things in the kitchen. I like the balance and its relatively soft blade (I steel it before and after doing stuff and sharpen it a couple of times a year). I use this knife nearly every day for multiple meals (I like to cook).

If I was trying to limit the number of knives in my kitchen I believe I can do everything I want with my 10 inch chef knife and my 5 or 6 inch boning knife stiff to semi-flex straight boning knife. Want to cut steaks? Chef knife. Want to whittle a radish? Boning knife. Need to crack a bone? Back of the chef knife. Silver skin? Boning knife. Break down a pumpkin? Chef knife. Skin a pumpkin? Boning knife.
 
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