Knife Knowledge

Knives are such an integral part of cooking; I thought I would write a little about them.

Purchasing: Don't go out and buy the biggest knife set you can find, often that $200 knife set can be replaced by only four really good knives.

Knife #1: A 7" hollow ground Santoku. This agile, versatile and excellent knife is used for final cuts on any vegetable or meat; it's great for thin slicing potatoes and onions, poultry, beef and even for julienne cuts and fine dicing. Although I have both 10" and 12" French Chef knifes, I usually revert to this Santoku. Don’t skimp on brands with this knife! Look for German brands like Wüsthof, American companies like Kershaw and Japanese companies like Masamoto. Expect to pay from $55-160USD for this knife, but realize it will stay razor sharp for years and is more useful than a half dozen other knives.

Knife #2: A good 3.25” paring knife. When working with fruits and veggies, sometimes you just need a little knife to get around seeds here, cut blemishes there, make decorative cuts and remove rinds. This will see a lot of use, and a really high quality one is usually in the $25USD ballpark.

Knife #3: A serrated bread knife. Many "sets" don't even come with one of these, but for soft products, from cakes to baguettes, it's indispensable. Since this is often used only on soft items, a more economy brand is often in order, you don’t need the finest Japanese folded steel to cut bread. I’ve got one I paid $11USD for, and it’s perfect.

Knife #4: A good 7” flexible filet knife. Sometimes you just need a knife with a little flexibility to get the skin off fish, to remove flesh from fruits and to get meat off bones. Some of the knives made generally available in sporting goods stores such as the ones made by Rapala for fishermen are just very good, hold an excellent edge and are economical, usually between $20-40 dollars.

Now, extra knives are fun, and a good solid thin bladed boning knife might even be 5th on my list, and a curved blade paring knife my 6^th, and a hollow blade slicer/carver can be great but you can usually do most home cooking with these above four, all else really are just slight conveniences and time savers.

Know I know that some of you are going to say, “Oh, but I can’t live without my this knife and that knife…”, and that’s totally OK. It means you’ve found a need for a knife and enjoy it’s use. It’s far better to buy a knife after you realize you have a need for one than to buy a drawer or block full of knives that don’t get used.