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  1. #1
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    Default On selecting basic kitchen knives

    On selecting basic kitchen knives


    The basic question: which knives are necessary in a kitchen? We use kitchen knives to prepare food and that is what they should be able to do. In my opinion, functionality and quality are the most important criteria when selecting a knife.

    On a sideline: my first knife was a small two bladed folder with blue plastic scales which I received as a gift from my father. I might have been five years old and unfortunately lost the little knife much too soon. The little folder might have started my affair with knives and I can clearly recall the day I decided to EDC a knife. It was a Sunday morning in Std 1 (Gr 3) and the big question was whether I should carry my pocket knife to church or not! Needless to say the knife went along. In high school teachers sometimes sent kids to find me “because he always has his knife”. Maybe I should call myself a knife snob?

    To continue the discussion: when starting a collection of kitchen knives one should get one thing straight: just like EDC firearms, kitchen knives are tools. They are made and meant to work. That means they will have the signs of usage and they might even get damaged. Although that is not what we want, it is also good because it shows they are doing what they were made for. A safe queen rifle or a drawer knife – no thanks. They should work. Treat them well and they will serve with pleasure for many, many years.

    To get to a point: which knives does one need in a kitchen?


    1. General purpose blades

    One needs one or two general purpose blades which can do literally anything in a kitchen. Just as regular hunters very often have a favourite go-to rifle, one needs that one knife which can doing anything from peeling potatoes to cutting pizza to working meat.

    The requirements:


    • A good handle. How on earth can one utilise a blade without the possibility to hold onto it properly? Get something with a large grip made of plastic, wood, bone, micarta, stacked leather or something similar. Soft rubber looks nice and feels good but is tiring in the long run because one cannot get a proper grip. There is a good reason why good knife companies use mostly hard grip materials. Personally I do not like finger grooves on handles because one cannot shift the grip when necessary.
    • The blade: 120-160mm in length, 30-50mm deep and 2-3mm thick. A long triangular shape with a slightly curved cutting edge and preferably a definitive heel. This heel should protrude past the grip to allow for cutting down hard on a cutting board. In the crosscut the blade should taper down towards a thin cutting edge. This reduces the resistance when cutting through material. Most better known brands use good steel. I would not worry about that too much. Hollow ground knives have no place in a kitchen. They waste energy, time and patience.
    • Examples: a 5” chef’s knife[1] works well; I also have a fondness for Opinel. They make great knives and the #12 knife[2] makes a great kitchen companion, but use the stainless version. (The carbon blades are excellent for pocket knife utilities.)



    2. Paring knives

    I do not like these little knives, mainly because my preference is for big knives. Still, they come in handy when cleaning veggies or doing other delicate tasks. Buy two or three paring knives, because they are always in the dishwasher or somewhere in between. Just take the next one and keep going. Suggestion: a serrated blade and two regular paring blades (one straight and one curved cutting edge) should get the job done. The steel on these little knives are usually very hard to prevent them from getting blunt to easily. They still become dull quite easily but stay useful because of the thin blades. Waste no time – just sharpen them on a piece of 400 grit sanding paper, or use a coarse stone. Pull the knife across the stone with the spine first - especially when using sanding paper.

    This is the one type of knife where you should not save on expenses. The cheap ones don’t last – buy once and cry once. Victorinox and Zwilling are good but even they need regular sharpening. Blade lengths differ – I have found the shorter blades or 4-8cm to work better than the longer blades, simply because they don’t wobble that much. The grips on these knives are almost without exception terrible because they are thin and small. Expect a tired hand.


    3. Bread/Slicing knife

    This one does not need to be a dedicated bread knife. Just get something with a thin (max 2mm), deep (30mm+) and long (250mm+) blade. It is used to cut bread, slice roast and cheese etc. After having sliced a few products with this one, one will probably by longing for it every single time it is not at hand. My all-time favourite in this category is the Zwilling High Carbon 10" Granton slicer.[3]

    This Zwilling blade is really hard and slightly brittle. Do not chop with it. Being that hard it stays sharp for a long time and slices through almost anything. I can slice cheddar chees into 1mm slices with mine, and even the softest bread is no problem once one gets the hang of it. This blade with the Granton scallops changed my mind about scallops. They might look weird but are highly functional because few things stick to the blade.

    Be very careful not to buy a slicing knife with a thick and shallow blade. I bought one which measures 2,5mm on the spine and tapers down to 1mm over a distance of 25mm. We tried it twice and it will be reprofiled in some future time.

    Bread knives are often serrated in some way, and even worse: sharpened on one side only. This results in torn and skew cuts. Throw it away and get something proper.

    4. Thin bladed cleaver shape

    This is not the heavy cleaver like in the movies but rather a cleaver shaped knife. Use it for splitting or chopping larger pieces of material, like cabbage or a bunch of spinach leaves. I also use mine to cut carrots into cubes, slice tomato and spread butter. Both of mine measure 170x50x2mm and they work daily.

    Interesting enough, I have seldom seen these knives in top brands. Mine are both Chinese cheapies with fairly hard steel and full tanged, or metal grips. In theory, these knives work so well because the wider part of the blades over the point delivers more momentum. The blades do not bend and make a straight cut, even through tougher material. I prefer to use these when cutting biltong.


    5. Chef’s knife

    I just realised that my most treasured knife (a 12” Zwilling) gets used very little. This classic chef’s knife is for days when we prepare larger amounts of food for family dinners or church functions and I have to work fast and precise. It is a no-nonsense blade which requires some training to handle well, but once going I resent putting her down. It is probably not that necessary in a kitchen


    Last thoughts:


    • My belief is that a knife should be heavy. Reason: a heavy knife has momentum and cuts through material easier. One works with knife’s momentum instead of utilising only muscle power.
    • Teach yourself to use the whole length of the blade whenever possible. One energetic long cut often does the work of several seconds’ see-sawing with the middle of the blade. JUST WATCH OUT FOR THOSE FINGERS – a knife should not be blamed for the cut on your finger.
    • Keep your knives sharp. Often people do not realise how much time and effort is wasted when working with a blunt knife. A sharp knife makes things much easier.
    • Stay clear from steel blades covered in Teflon, ceramic etc. These are usually made from soft steel and are marketed to the uninformed via telemarketing etc. I have had to sharpen these on too many occasions – please don’t waste your money if you want to be serious about knives.
    • Real ceramic blades ([4],[5]) are a pleasure to work with, but they are specialist tools. If you allow your kids to work with you, or have personnel using your knives I would seriously advise steel blades. A fallen ceramic blade is a broken or chipped ceramic blade. My experience with ceramic blades is lacking - I understood that they require special attention in sharpening.
    • Good brands: Zwilling is king in my opinion, but we do not all need a Ferrari or Porsche for shopping, do we? My Zwilling knives were gifts or once-off buys because they are expensive. Victorinox can be expensive when buying their better ranges, but few brands beat their combination of price and quality. Tramontina and Mundial are excellent for everyday usage. There are several other great brands as well - knives from Scandinavia are generally very good.
    • I mentioned that a knife should have a heel. However, there is a catch: on some knives the bolster extends onto the heel and down to the cutting edge. There might be some good reason for this but this bolster makes proper sharpening an ordeal. Just get a knife without such a bolster.
    • Take care to get a knife with a long and large handle. Few of the ergonomic designs work well when one has lots of work to do.



    Attachment 29842



    [1] https://www.yuppiechef.com/wusthof-g...efs-Knife-16cm or https://www.tramontina.com.br/en/p/2...-cooks-knife-5

    [2] https://www.opinel.com/en/tradition/...tainless-steel

    [3] https://www.wantitall.co.za/homegard...CABEgLAavD_BwE

    [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_knife

    [5] http://www.ceramicknife.co.za/store/...SAAEgKlRvD_BwE

  2. #2
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    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    I have an OLD knife in the kitchen that my father in law picked up off the street in Potchefstroom many, many years ago while he was out walking. It has a very rigid stainless blade and while I can't remember the brand now, it is some English/British company that made it. It has a wooden handle and the blade steel is quite hard. The knife isn't heavy, it's not the biggest and it has a strange blade shape, almost like a butcher's knife crossed with a chef's knife, with a drop-point.

    Man, I love that knife. It sharpens pretty well (not that I put razor edges on my kitchen knives), and holds the edge pretty well.

    I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but to me one of the easiest ways to really care for your knives are to not use them on hard surfaces like glass or marble cutting boards or surfaces. Get a good butcher's block or even a cheap white plastic cutting board if you need something in a pinch, since a glass or other hard-surface cutting board really ruins a good, sharp knife's cutting edge.

    Also, use the right knife for the job. A cleaver is made for chopping through bone, not chopping herbs, and a chef's knife is made for general purpose cutting, slicing and chopping in the preparing phase of foods, not to chop through bone or to fillet a fish.

    PS I don't have a lot, but man I love me a knife. I'm STRONGLY considering investing some money in a nice santoku. I love a chef's knife but I sometimes find the belly too round (when slicing longer cuts or veggies), which the santoku's flatter, almost sheepsfoot shape will help with.

  3. #3
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    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    By the way, this thread now has me shopping for knives. My wife's going to kill me.

  4. #4
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    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    Dominee, what do you use the cleavers for? I quite like to cook, but I can honestly say that I never thought to myself: I need a cleaver for this.

    For years I basically only had a 14cm Global vegetable chopper which served me very well, and the only times I wanted "more knife" was when I had to cut something long, like when making biltong. But I started struggling to keep it sharp, so 'n got myself a Wusthof 20cm chef's knife. What a pleasure that thing is to use. It has 'n nice weight to it, where the Global is rather light.

    One other important thing that I would add as a must have, is a good quality sharpening steel for quick touchups of the blade.

  5. #5
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    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    Reaper, those are cleaver shaped knives - I do not know a better word. I would not chop anything with them because the steel is too hard. They are really versatile; I do anything with them except small cleaning chores, peeling etc. Maybe it is just the deep heel and the relatively shorter blade that makes them so easy to work with. They are becoming my go-to knives for much of our regular cooking.

    In a day we could use them to crack eggs,flip an omelette, slice bread and meat and cheese, dice carrots and cucumber, spread butter etc. I prefer to use them when chopping onions because one simply use the flat of the blade to load the little pieces into the pot. I recently also used them to chop spinach bunches.

    I have a real cleaver as well, but we use it seldom. Its only functions are to break blocks of frozen offcuts for the dogs, or to break open real big bones for them. A student once stayed over in our house and used the cleaver to chop wood.

  6. #6
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    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    Right... I see your point especially with transferring things to the pot.

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  7. #7

    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    DsJ
    I do al lot of cooking and realy enjoy it,my wife doesn’t like to cook so she leaves most of the cooking for me.
    Before we got married she gave me a Wushtof 150mm chef knife for my birthday.
    A short wile after we got engaged I bought a set of Wushtof knifes for the kitchen.
    In the set I got a 180mm chef knife , large bread knife, paring knife, kitchen scissors and a nice sharpening steel.
    This was probably my best investment for the kitchen, the knifes gets sharpened about every six months or so on wet stones and the rest of the time on the sharpening steel as needed.
    I can highly recommend the 150mm and 180mm chef knifes as a combination, the 150mm knife is the most used knife in the house. It simply has awesome balance and cuts and chops everything with ease.
    The 180mm works great for bigger jobs.
    I must agree with you on the paring knifes, works great for small jobs but usually the small chef knife works better for that as well.
    The kitchen scissors also gets a lot of use, one very important part of the set must be the knife block , I hate to keep my knifes in a drawer and everything is at arms reach when in the block.


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  8. #8
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    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    I quite like the multicolour Victorinox 3 pack kitchen knife sets. They are great multi purpose blades.

  9. #9
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    Default Re: On selecting basic kitchen knives

    Hein, you got me there. I forgot about Wüsthof.

    And I am glad that you mentioned the two blade lengths. They get the jobs done.

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