Kitchen Knives

Is it just me, or are there suddenly a million kitchen knives to choose from?

I understand that knives need to be replaced every so often, especially if you drop one in your garbage disposal or in the actual garbage, but I don't recall having the choice of 20+ knives in my supermarket before. Maybe everyone is getting the notion to become the next Iron Chef, but I don't think that's really it. Maybe it's just education as a result of friends like Emeril, Martha, Bobby, Alton, Rachel... I refer to them by their first names, but you know who I mean.

As a result of the plethora of "new" knives on the market, I thought I would educate my readers a bit on what I know about kitchen knives. My knowledge is limited, but these knives are the ones I use day in and day out. They are the work-horses of my kitchen and they make my life easier.


Here you see, from top to bottom, the following knives:
Santoku
Chef's
Bread
Boning
Paring


The top two knives, the Sentoku and Chef's, are general all-purpose knives that do the most work in a kitchen. The curved blade shape allows you to cut and chop using a rocking motion. As the blade rocks, the knife remains stable and the work is done efficiently and quickly.


The serrated blade on my chef's knife has notches that help to cleanly cut through soft foods like eggs, tomatoes, and sandwiches without damaging the food with an edge that looks like a tiny saw.

This type of serration is time consuming to sharpen yourself and expensive to have professionally done. And as you can clearly see, with extensive use the tiny teeth chip off causing the knife to snag and tear when slicing meats. Not a good thing.

For this reason, I do not recommend purchasing expensive serrated knives. Inexpensive ones will do the job as well as more costly knives and you won't feel like you have to keep using a dull knife because it will cause you a fortune to have it professionally sharpened.


Fairly new to the American kitchen is the santoku knife. It's slim design is Japanese (go figure) and is currently my favorite kitchen knife. It is similar to a traditional chef's knife in that is is used for similar tasks. "San" is the Japanese word for three and "toku" is the Japanese word for good things so the knife possesses three good works in that it can slice, dice and chop.

The santoku blade is typically thinner than a chef's knife which allows for a smoother and more precise cut. The little oval-shaped indentations on the sides reduce friction, allowing sliced food to fall to the side instead of sticking to the blade. And that's a good thing.


These are the bottom two knives in the picture, the top one is a boning knife and the bottom one is a paring knife.

While the paring knife is said to be the miniature equivalent of the chef's knife, I find myself turning to the boning knife more often for slicing delicate foods such as soft cheese and tomatoes. Its flexible, long, thin blade works as well as the larger chef's knife and the smaller size is more comfortable to use on smaller foods.

The paring knife works well for peeling fruits and vegetables that are too delicate for a vegetable peeler, so that is its primary use for me.


The knife in the middle is the bread knife. Pretty much only used for slicing bread, the serrated blade is a MUST for slicing through thick outer crusts of fresh baked loaves without crushing the soft inner bread. If a bread knife's sole use is slicing bread, the serrated blade will virtually never dull.


Knives are best stored in a knife block. This makes them easy to find, keeps them from dulling each other while banging around in a drawer, and keeps you from accidentally cutting yourself while reaching in a drawer to find the knife you need.

Empty knife blocks are easy to find at thrift stores and yard sales so pick one up for a buck and add your own knives. It's a great way to achieve an eclectic looking kitchen.