Choosing Kitchen Cutlery
First off, we'll eliminate exotic materials like ceramics, plastic and titanium. Each of these materials offers certain advantages in specific environments but they are pretty nearly useless in the kitchen. Knifemakers do offer kitchen knives made from them but they are novelty items. When we talk kitchen knives, we're talking STEEL, boys.
OK, let's talk a little bit about metallurgy. Basically you have three qualities that matter for the purpose of kitchen knives. These are hardness (which affects the knife's ability to take and keep sharpness), springiness (which affects the toughness of the knife) and rust resistance (which is pretty self-explanatory). Without going into a lot of detail about carbon, chrome and nickel content and all the different kinds of heat treatments, improving on any one of these is going to negatively affect the other two, and while getting a knife that has great characteristics on all three is possible, it'll cost a fortune.
Thus, at the lower end of the price range you are going to find your typical grocery-store knife that will stay shiny forever but is practically impossible to put an edge on and won't keep that edge once you put it on there, and is flimsy besides. Going one step higher, you'll find knives made of specific types of "stainless" (more like stain-resistant) steel that are tough enough for normal kitchen use and keep a pretty good edge, and at the top of the line there are knives made of composite steel, usually by sandwitching a thin sheet of very hard steel between two layers of very soft, springy metal, but also including damascus steels. Since we are not made of money we'll discuss the middle price ranges.
Before we go on, I would like to note that in kitchen knives, as anywhere else, you get what you pay for. If you buy a Wusthof/Henckels/Shun/French Sabatier, you get a fine piece of cutlery, but you also get a status symbol. That's fine, if you don't mind paying extra for such things.
First of all, you have a choice between stamped and forged blades. Forged blades are traditional, they're usually thicker and generally better-made than stamped. Stamped blades have gotten a bad rap because it's the method used for making cheap grocery-store type knives, but some companies, like Victorinox, make stamped knives that are comparable to the less expensive of the forged ones. I say just go for the sure thing and get forged knives, unless you are planning to use an electric sharpener, which will mess up the bolster (the fat part of the forged blade that connects the blade to the handle).
Things to look for: 440C, 440HC are most common "quality" steels (if it lists something different on the box, write it down and look it up online before buying), freeze tempering (a process that makes steel both harder and tougher). Things to avoid: "Surgical Stainless" (this is meaningless, since there are no standards for "surgical" steel), knives that say "Forged Technology" on them, since they're basically a stamped blade welded to a cast bolster and handle. "400 series" and "440" by itself are also suspect; if they were using a high-quality steel, they would want to advertise that.
Serrated kitchen knives are made of failure. Get a straight edge or you might as well be cutting stuff with a plastic picnic knife. While serrations are good for a few things (cutting bread or tomatos, basically) they suck at everything else, and they're hard to sharpen.
Another thing to take into consideration is the blade cross-section. Basically you have straight grind, in which the blade progressively gets thicker in straight lines from the edge to the back, and hollow grind, in which the lines are actually concave. Hollow-grind knives offer the least resistance to cutting but they are a little more expensive than the other kind.
As to what knives you'll need, I'd say start with a chef's knife and a paring knife. The chef's knife is specialised for chopping food but it will carve and slice as well. A paring knife is a little utility knife you'll be using for jobs that require more precision than the big blade affords. There are several varieties of them (differently-shaped tips and so forth) but when you get down to it they all do pretty much the same thing. Also, get a pair of kitchen shears. The kind that come apart for cleaning are the easiest to care for.
People whose job is to sell kitchen knives will say that you absolutely must have the right tool for every job. This is true as far as it goes, but a good chef's knife and paring knife will likely cover the bases in your kitchen with ease. Getting as much practice as you can with that chef's knife (which means using it for pretty much everything) will give you the skill you need to do a better job with it than you would with the "right" knife and little to no practice.
Santokus, which are a type of Japanese knife, are gaining popularity as an alternative to the standard Western chef's knife. They tend to be much lighter and whippier than their Western counterpart, which makes for greater ease of handling, and they are adequate for 90% of the jobs you'll do with the standard chef's knife, the only problem being that you'll need a chef's knife or cleaver for the other 10% anyway.
If you decide to get a kitchen cutlery set, make sure at least the chef's knife fits your hand well and is the right weight. It's easily the most-used knife in the bunch.
