Anyone into knives?

Great thread guys! As a professional chef, it's great to see "regular" folk talk about gear with the same zeal as us sleep-deprived crazy souls.

However, you really don't need a zillion knives to work effectively in the kitchen. Let me dispel a few myths...

Originally Posted by Demented

In my opinion, the minimum knives needed;

Chef's
Bread
Paring
Utility
Carving
Slicing
Boning
Butcher
Fillet

A Utility knife is the best tool for task like slicing mushrooms, garlic, radishes or shallots for a salad when only a little is needed, and cutting tomato for a sandwich or a sandwich for that matter, when a paring knife is to small and a chef's knife to large.

I've never actually seen anyone in a professional kitchen use a utility knife (i.e. a mid-sized knife in limbo between a large chef knife and a small pairing knife), and that's because you can do 99% of jobs with a chef's knife. Anything more intricate (e.g. cutting patterns into vegetables and other fancy stuff) needs a pairing knife, or if you're into barrelling veggies (very rare other than in super-fancy restaruants) you'll need a turning knife.

Also in an ideal world you would use a serrated tomato knife to cut tomatoes, but in practice a really, really sharp chef's knife does the job just as well.

For getting really thin cuts of roast meat for sandwiches a slicing knife is hard to beat.

All those beautifully-cut, paper thin slices of meat in your deli sandwich and at restaurants? Gravity slicer, baby!

The last 3 are task oriented knives that may not get allot of use (depending on how you prep/shop), if you buy whole poultry, fish, primal cuts of beef or pork, rabbits etc. they are hard to get by without.

True (especially with regards to the boning knife), but the vast majority of professional food suppliers and retail stores will supply major cuts of meat already de-boned, as there is huge competition between suppliers. The largest cuts of meat I have to prep are pork bellies (i.e. the whole underside of the pig plus ribs) and a chef's knife is perfect.

A fillet knife for fish is indispensable if you prep a lot of fish. You need that long, flexible blade to slide in between the bones and for neatly taking the skin off. I've tried to fillet bream with a rigid chef's knife, and failed miserably.


So to sum up, the absolute minimum you'll need is:

A quality chef's knife... yup, that's it. And depending on your kitchen, you'll certainly need a bread knife (if you prep a lot of bread, I personally don't), a fillet knife (if you prep a lot of fish, I do), a cleaver (if you have to split a lot of bones, I do) and maybe a pairing knife if you're doing fancy garnishes (although you can just use the tip of your chef's knife in most cases). Easy!

Oh, and for the record I use Henckels 4-Star knives... I like the weight although I'm looking to change to a thinner blade...


I'm sure MPW would agree: