show us yours!
Is there a reason your only chef’s knife is so …long?
Compensation.
I hear you brother.
Why arent they all looking left or right? That chaos is giving me toc.
I never quite figured out what people need multiple knives for when I get by perfectly fine with a single high quality santoku chef knife.
A lot of people can get by with a single knife. I think OP here is a lot deeper into the hobby of either cooking or knives. I can acknowledge at least that deboning a chicken or turkey with a santoku isn’t very pleasant
For me:
- Thinner boning/fish knife for finding cartilage seams between bones, or deboning certain cuts. My chef’s knife is too big to navigate a curved path through meat, at least not precisely.
- Thicker/heavier cleaver for cutting through bones directly. I don’t want to chip my chef’s knife blade on very forceful cuts.
- Rectangular Nakiri is great for chopping firm vegetables with a blade edge that’s in a straight line, rather than the curved edge of a chef’s knife (which usually calls for a rocking or slicing motion when chopping).
- Serrated bread knife for bread. I don’t want to be crushing a freshly baked loaf too much while slicing into it.
- Cheap/shitty serrated bread knife for ice.
- Long carving knife for presentation, tableside carving of a roast or ham or things like that. If I’m carving back in the kitchen I’m probably just using a chef’s knife rather than grabbing something new to have to clean.
Everything else in the kitchen, I use a chef’s knife. I had a one-knife kitchen for like the first 10 years of my adult life, before branching out to a vegetable knife and a boning knife. The other stuff is more recent (ice knife when I got really into cocktails around 2015, bread knife when I was part of that sourdough craze of 2020).
I also have knives for serving (butter knives, steak knives, cheese knives for charcuterie platters, etc.), but that’s not really a kitchen function.
A good chef’s knife serves a lot of purposes very well and gets the most use in my house. But some knives are better for some tasks. I have a chefs knife that I use for the majority of chopping tasks for cooking prep. But I also have paring knifes for slicing small things, fruits, cheese, etc. or where finess is required that a chef knife is too unwieldy for the job, a bread knife for bread (duh), a boning knife (it doesn’t get a ton of use but is nice to have when needed), and a very nice Santoku knife I only whip out when I need to butcher a chicken or something and need a bit if chef knife and a bit of cleaver. I also have serrated knives for cutting meats, and butter knives for butters and spreads.
i have a nice hecknels 8” “universal” chefs knife. if i could only have one that might be it, but with all the choices, its never the best for anything and i ended up never using it so its now in storage.
There’s a time and place for em, but yeah, my 8"chef’s knife does usually get the least usage unless I’m cooking a real meal with potatoes and meat and carrots and stuff. I never noticed that.
Seriously, I have a chef’s knife, santoku, and a paring knife and I feel bougie as fuck.
Yeah, I always wonder, if it’s a matter of having multiple knives in rotation, so they don’t dull as quickly and so you can keep some in the sink until you do the dishes.
Because if you’ve got the space and the money to spare, then using the slightly more optimal knife isn’t extra effort anymore.But yeah, I’m also of the opinion that if you keep your knife sharp, then it can split those atoms, and that’s ultimately what we’re here for.
So, personally, I’d rather not spare the space for having multiple tools with the same purpose. ¯\_(⊙ʖ⊙)/¯so you can keep some in the sink until you do the dishes.
That’s how they get dull. Knife should never be stored wet for even 10 minutes.
When I wrote that, I was sure someone would take offense, but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it. 😅
Invest a fraction of what your kitchen knives cost and renovate your wall, son!
Not his kitchen he just has to work in it.
They have their priorities right.
What is the purpose of the one with the large holes?
Things that like to stick to the blade. Typically cheese.
How much cheese are they carving to have two cheese knives?
The one with the round holes counts as a cleaver as the tip is squared off, right?
i bought two because i wanted to try each style and see which one keeps its place. so far i kinda like the circle one more but find more uses for the other one.
The circular holed one does look cooler.
I think that one is flutted and that is to help with food release with sticky or starchy produce.
None of the people who own fancy knices use them for anything other than showing off. These people do not ever post pictures of their cooking, only picture of new 100+ moneta knife.
I have fancy knives because I cook a lot and I use them nearly every day.
Is the magnet on the strip good if so could please you send me a link? Its very hard to tell when buying them online. Tysm!
I can send you the brand but the thing is at least fifteen years old so I can’t vouch for them anymore.
The Yuki line really is solid, I like my 240mm Yuki gyuto a lot. Nice grind, some interesting concavity, super thin behind the edge. Really good cutter. I think mine’s closer to 60HRC, retention is only okay but it sharpens insanely easily, just loves any degree of polish you throw at it.
I had one of the sujihikis for a while, too, decent knife but I didn’t like it as much.
Several years ago I wanted a Yuki long petty, say 200mm on the edge. Now it would be more than I’d want to pay.
All those knives were under $100 when I bought them.
Now I don’t even want to check.
Artisanal Japanese kitchen knives are all up, for obvious reasons, but the Yuki skyrocketed. It was popular because it was affordable, stainless clad white #2 with an okay handle. I think that popularity juiced up the price, which sadly defeats the purpose.
That bunka is a fantastic knife for under $100. I paid $150 for my Yuki gyuto, which was a legitimately good deal even at the time.
About twenty years ago?
According to its papers, it was finished December 23rd, 2015. I would have bought it a few months after that. I think the retail price was around $180 at the time.
Nice knife!
Cool, new content!
That’s a beautiful array of knives! I’m hesitant to invest in good knives because I’ve never felt confident in keeping them sharp
Even budget knives benefit a lot from being sharp. A Spyderco Sharpmaker will last a lifetime and is enough for most home cooks. The rolling sharpeners are okay for plenty of people, too, particularly if you’re not worried about scratching up the blade’s face.
I would rather use a sharp IKEA knife than a dull expensive knife.
none of those are expensive! i have some wustoff and henknels but they are no longer in my workng set. just too… plain? they were 8” chefs knives which i found i almost never used. check out winco knives. they are great quality and very reasonable
Those French, santoku/usuba, & straight carving knives aren’t Wusthof?
I absolutely love my one of these for keeping my knives sharp. It was very cheap too.
In fairness though it makes having cheap knives that are always sharp very easy so that’s kinda what I do.
Just keep any knife that cost over 10 bucks as far from that thing as you possibly can. These absolutely annihilate the edge.
nice! in a tool ket too. i see you like longer knives as well. 8” just isnt enough for me most of the time.
To my surprise I use a santoku a lot these days. For most things it’s just as functional but it’s more convenient when prepping in a small space.
My debatably “best” knife is a Shigefusa santoku, I think it’s 170mm or so. I have a Wakui 180mm gyuto I really like, too. I only have one or two 8”ish knives, I like to either have a big knife or a small knife.
If I need to break down a lot of something I do of course reach for a a bigger knife. The gyuto here is a Shibata take on the Masamoto KS, which itself related to the old Sabatiers. The Shibata is 255mm on the edge if I recall correctly, so just at 10”. I think newer versions of the knife are a bit shorter?
The slicer is 270mm, mostly for roasts and fish breakdown. Has to be at least that long. My best slicer is 300mm, but it’s a little expensive to just have floating around.
After “don’t run with scissors” comes “don’t drive with knives”
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That ain’t a knife that’s a machete. You butchering an entire cow or somethin
Second from the right isn’t a kitchen knife but a short sword or maybe a scimitar. I prefer my chef’s knives shorter than usual (16cm). I do wonder, what is the advantage when handling normal kitchen ingredients or actually anything that isn’t a whole cow?
yeah its a beast. 12”. im pretty tall so it just fits better and help me reach the cutting board more naturally. it also is amazing for mellons or anything big but before the chinese chefs knife it was my usual goto and replaced my much more expensive standard size chefs knife on the board.
These are definitely the kind that whisper
Surely all you really need is a paring knife and either a cleaver or chefs knife?
I’ve been watching a lot of Chinese cooking content over the last few years and they use a cleaver for basically everything, I’m thinking of switching to one once my cheap ass chefs knife gives out.
