Kitchen nice set

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PT Doc

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I was talking with someone about cooking and the discussion went to knives. They want to buy a nicer set and we talked about how many knives in a block really are unneeded. I recommended discussing their needs and wants with a knife maker and proceeding that way. I recommended this site but they said they just want to buy a small set for about $400. I don't know if you guys know much about the steel that production manufacturers use. Wustof, Henckels and the like that are sold by retailers like Williams Sonoma but I could not contribute. I offered to post on this forum, so here I am. Thanks for you help.
 
Please define "small set".
Shun has about one of everything, and are pretty nice. I have no doubt he could put something together he liked.
 
I have a huge Wusthof block with almost every knife in the book. I also have a Shun Chef that my buddy gave me years ago. I grab the Shun (Kai) every time. I think a block with a chef, a bread and either a boning or something small that some people like to use is all most of us need.
 
I suggest reading An Edge in the Kitchen as first step. It's a lot cheaper than spending $400 on a set of knives most of which they won't use.

For more details, many of the German knives are made of X50CrMoV15. That's got .5% carbon, 14.5% chromium and a little vanadium and molybdenum. IMO, that's way too little carbon to make a sufficiently hard blade. The book I referenced explains why they use this -- basically because thicker blades made with this tolerate abuse better, even though they work worse. Is that the compromise your friends want to choose?
 
The kitchen knives I use most are;
#1 Gyuto / Chef knife
#2 Nakiri / kind of a vegetable cleaver/knife
#3 Suji / Slicer
#4 Petti / small chef knife
I could easily get by with just these four.
But.......I keep seeing other knives I like.
 
Dan Pierson said:
I suggest reading An Edge in the Kitchen as first step. It's a lot cheaper than spending $400 on a set of knives most of which they won't use.

For more details, many of the German knives are made of X50CrMoV15. That's got .5% carbon, 14.5% chromium and a little vanadium and molybdenum. IMO, that's way too little carbon to make a sufficiently hard blade. The book I referenced explains why they use this -- basically because thicker blades made with this tolerate abuse better, even though they work worse. Is that the compromise your friends want to choose?
Click to expand...

That's an excellent book.

I read an electronic copy for free, not a PDF but an Adobe Editions file - I'm not sure where from, maybe an Ebook libary loan, but I do remember it was concise, readable and useful.
 
Burl Source said:
The kitchen knives I use most are;
#1 Gyuto / Chef knife
#2 Nakiri / kind of a vegetable cleaver/knife
#3 Suji / Slicer
#4 Petti / small chef knife
I could easily get by with just these four.
But.......I keep seeing other knives I like.
Click to expand...
yep hard working chef
super thin veg knife
sliceer for making steaks out of large prime cuts
and the petty/ parer
 
I agree that those are a good "fantastic four" for the kitchen.

Within each of those categories you have a lot of variations that can be used to pick the shape most suited to your personal use. You don't need six types of vegetable knives, but if you mainly use it to make salads, pick a shape that suits that task. And for the slicer, it can run from a large fish slicer to a shorter meat slicer...whichever you do most.
The knives can be used across the style boundaries to fit the needed cutting tasks. Your chef blade may be used to break down a pork shoulder, before slicing into chunks with the slicer....etc.

The most used knife in the kitchen will probably be the petty (or an usuba). Make it hand friendly and small enough to be the "go to" knife for most small/general tasks. It often is used 100 times to all the other knives total of 20.
 
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