The Four Kitchen Knives You Need for Home Cooking

Kitchen Knives You Need for Home Cook­ing: A kitchen knife is the most essen­tial tool any ama­teur or pro­fes­sion­al cook should own. A good set of knives will open up a whole world of pos­si­bil­i­ties when it comes to slic­ing, dic­ing, or chop­ping ingre­di­ents to achieve the per­fect pre­sen­ta­tion for your meals.

Know­ing which knives and how many of them your kitchen col­lec­tion will require varies from per­son to per­son, but you do not have to spend a for­tune on tools that may only be used on spe­cial occa­sions. There are numer­ous qual­i­ty knives that will not break bank accounts but still do the same job with absolute finesse.

Remem­ber that it is the skill of the chef and not the knife that can make a great meal. Knives, for any chef, are no more than tools for cre­at­ing food. How­ev­er, good knives do have their ben­e­fits; they are usu­al­ly sharp­er than low­er-qual­i­ty ones and stay sharp for longer. Besides, a sharp knife allows greater con­trol with cut­ting.

Still, with so many dif­fer­ent types of knives on the mar­ket today that you could use in your home kitchen, the fol­low­ing four types of knives will be more than enough for the major­i­ty of your home cook­ing tasks. In addi­tion, you will need an all-pur­pose Chef’s Knife for most sized cut­ting, a Util­i­ty Knife for small­er mem­bers of your fam­i­ly who have small­er hands than you do, a par­ing is per­fect for cre­at­ing a nice pre­sen­ta­tion to how one cuts their food, and Ser­rat­ed knives to help bet­ter pre­pare cer­tain ingredients.

Price You Are Expected for The Knives

There are knives avail­able for each bud­get out there, from $5 to sky-high. At the same time, the price for medi­um-range to high-end knives varies from 50$ to 3000$ and even above that. How­ev­er, there are gen­uine bar­gains in terms of mon­ey for val­ue, even under the 50$ threshold.

Chef’s Knife

The Chef’s knife is the most ver­sa­tile knife you may ever own and a kitchen tool that is cer­tain­ly worth pur­chas­ing. You will do about 75% of all cut­ting, chop­ping, and slic­ing with this knife, while the pair­ing and util­i­ty knives will do the rest of the job. It could be used for most tasks, from cut­ting large pieces of meat or cut­ting across the bone to chop­ping veg­eta­bles; it is also great at minc­ing, dic­ing, slic­ing var­i­ous ingre­di­ents, and more.

A Chef’s knife has a wide tri­an­gu­lar shape blade with 1½ inch­es width at its widest. The width pro­vides extra lever­age when cut­ting tough ingre­di­ents like meats or bones. Blade spine length varies from 6 inch­es to 14 inch­es, but around 8 inch­es is the most com­mon size for home cook­ing. In com­par­i­son, a 10- 12 inch­es blade is most suit­ed for pro­fes­sion­al chefs with culi­nary training.

A few Chef’s knife styles are known — French style, Ger­man-style, and Japan­ese-style. The French-style Chef’s knife will have an almost per­fect tri­an­gu­lar shape with a straighter edge curv­ing up to the tip. A Ger­man-style knife has a wider angle of tri­an­gle edge part that allows it a rock­ing action dur­ing usage. A Japan­ese-style Chef could have French, Ger­man, or in-between shape blades. How­ev­er, it has a lighter weight and a sharp­er edge. It will be gen­er­al­ly con­struct­ed from a high-qual­i­ty, very hard stain­less steel alloy. Japan­ese Chef’s knives are also known under San­toku or Gyuto/Gyutou names.

Victorinox Chef’s Knife

Paring Knife

The Par­ing knife is a sort of com­ple­ment to the Chef’s knife. It is small­er in size and designed for the more del­i­cate task Chef’s knife is usu­al­ly too big to do. Par­ing Knives are great for peel­ing and less force­ful cut­ting jobs like cut­ting an apple or pota­to into a pret­ty lit­tle shape for pre­sen­ta­tion on a plate at a fan­cy din­ner par­ty. It is also good at bon­ing fish or carv­ing roasts.

The same as Chef’s knife, a par­ing knife has a tri­an­gu­lar shape and 2 ½ inch­es to 4 inch­es blade length. It is designed with a small and com­fort­able han­dle and a sharp tip, so it is accu­rate to per­form any del­i­cate or detailed job. Unlike oth­er types of knives, a Par­ing knife could be used with­out a cut­ting board because its small han­dle allows the user a lot of control.

 

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Cut­luxe Util­i­ty Knife

Utility Knife

Util­i­ty Knife was used for most kitchen duties when the chef’s knife was not so pop­u­lar­ized. Nowa­days, it is main­ly used for sim­ple jobs such as prepar­ing meats and small­er cut­ting tasks. It is also good at fil­let­ing small pieces of meat or poul­try, trim­ming veg­gies, slic­ing sal­ad ingre­di­ents, minc­ing herbs, or peel­ing fruit. They can also be used to intri­cate­ly carve or styl­ize foods for ele­gant pre­sen­ta­tions or gar­nish­es and big­ger tasks such as meal prepa­ra­tion.

Also, you will find that using a util­i­ty knife is much bet­ter suit­ed for del­i­cate jobs when slic­ing sushi rolls, for instance, since this knife allows for pre­ci­sion over its larg­er counterparts.

A util­i­ty knife is very sim­i­lar to a chef’s knife. It has an aver­age blade length between 4 and 7 inch­es, although it also can be any­where in between. In Japan, the name util­i­ty knife is called Pet­ty Knife is the Japan­ese style of Util­i­ty that is so pop­u­lar now in the West due to its qual­i­ty mate­r­i­al and more extend­ed service.

Cut­luxe Util­i­ty Knife

Serrated Edge Knife

A ser­rat­ed Edge Knife is a spe­cial­ty knife for cut­ting bread, steak, or toma­to. The bread knife is the most well-known among them. Oth­er types have a sim­i­lar ser­rat­ed edge but dif­fer in size; for exam­ple, bread knives have blades up to 10 inch­es long with ser­ra­tion along all its length, and the steak knife fea­tures very sharp ser­ra­tions and a point­ed tip. In con­trast, the ser­rat­ed toma­to knife is small with a fork instead of a point.

Although ser­rat­ed knives have very lim­it­ed appli­ca­tion, they mim­ic the saw and excel at pen­e­trat­ing through ingre­di­ents with a hard out­side and a soft inside. The sharp teeth make it pos­si­ble to cuts fine­ly through bread, cakes, or toma­to exte­ri­ors and not destroy their gen­tle inte­ri­or.

Mercer Culinary Knife

Final Thoughts

If you are a kitchen novice or maybe just want to skip straight to the main course, a good knife for every­day use is all you need. They will serve you faith­ful­ly for years with only a min­i­mal amount of care required, such as keep­ing them sharp (some can be sharp­ened when their ser­ra­tions begin to dull) and clean­ing them imme­di­ate­ly after use.