what you need to know About kitchen knives – introduction
Posted on | February 28, 2010 | No Comments
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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT KITCHEN KNIVES
Introduction
Whether you’re interested in buying a new knife or just know more about the knives you already have, this is the first post in a series that will help you understand what makes some knives better – or at least different – for any given task.
Most but not all of the series will be centered around the chef’s knife aka gyuto.* More specifically to what I like to call “the go-to gyuto.” Usually, a cook has one knife which she uses for the majority of prep. And for most of us, that is (or should be) a chef’s.
My essay on knives may be a bit different than what you’re used to. I believe strongly that the four aspects of knife skills, knife choice, sharpening skills and sharpening kit, are so inter-dynamic, that in order to meaningfully consider one, it must be within the context of the other three. (Sorry that sounds so academic.)
Remember these two things: All knives dull eventually. Once dull, all knives are created equal. If you can’t maintain sharpness, it doesn’t make sense (at least not as a practical matter) to buy expensive knives. More, a dull knife will limit your prep ability to coarse and uneven cuts. That not only impacts appearance, but the ways in which ingredients incorporate and flavors marry.
Sometimes, because so many people cannot sharpen the choice is dictated by which knife is seemingly sharpest. This often means a steak knife, which is actually more of a saw than a knife and has many of the same limitations in terms of making fine cuts as dies a dull knife.
This all leads to my first…
Knife Buying Recommendation 1: If you don’t know how to sharpen, don’t want to learn, and won’t or can’t invest in one of the choices which don’t require much learning – my suggestion is to stick with very cheap knives. Anything expensive is just a waste of money.
* You may infer from the term gyuto that there will be some discussion of Japanese manufactured knives. Good inference. However, I will largely avoid traditional Japanese, chisel and hamaguri edge geometries and stick with western style “V” edges, western profiles, and western (yo) handles. If you now infer that there’s going to be a lot of discussion of Japanese manufactured knives, you’ve made another good inference.
The what you need to know About kitchen knives – introduction by Cook Food Good, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Tags: gyuto > Kitchen knives > knife skills > Knives > santoku > sharpening
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WHO IS BDL, Boar D. Laze, or whatever the hell his name is?
A Brief Biography:
Ex-Navy Seal; Ex-Victoria’s Secret model; Turned down a three-way with Sophia Loren and the young Marlene Dietrich (as in the Blue Angel) because had other plans; Knows who killed everyone in The Big Sleep, and why; Chaired the work-group which invented Time, Space, Gravity, Fire and Holiday Sweaters; Prefers Dickel to Jack.
What is Cook Food Good?
What’s this site about? It’s about a lot of thingsForcing myself to work out issues relating to writing a cookbook: COOK FOOD GOOD: American Cooking and Technique for Beginners and Intermediates.
Getting feedback on my work from you.
Discussions on basic and not-so-basic techniques. The recipes here are very technique driven. Similarly, the idea behind the book is to be far more about the how than the what – with the goal of teaching you to create your own recipes and tweak other people’s, confidently and successfully.
How to cook better, as it relates to you (and me too). That is, taking a beginner or advanced beginner to good, restaurant quality. Mostly this will be (more or less) French technique and (more or less) American food. But only mostly, more or less.
Recipes for this, that and the other.
Knives and all about sharpening them (which have somehow become a subject on which I frequently get asked for advice): How to choose and how to use.
The first Cook Food Good Blog was hosted by the website, Chef Talk. However, CT, removed its blog section. If you’re interested in bad writing, poor punctuation and ancient history, you’ll find the old CT posts archived here. One thing about posting on CT, was that it acted as a sort of language and attitude super-ego. Don’t count on it here. This is naked id.
