What are the different chefs knives for. Why is a butcher knife shaped the way it is? In what way is a Santuko better than a standard "Chefs Knife".
Educate me please.
Let's start with some common language. When I hear "chef's knife," I think of what is traditionally called a french knife.
These come in various sizes. I have a 6", an 8" and a 9 1/2". This style is probably "the one knife" that a classicly trained American chef (Culinary Institute, Cordon Bleu, Johnson and Wales, etc.) would choose. This is the work horse, The knife that gets reached for most often because of it's versatility. But, as they say, a craftsman is only as good as his tools(extrapolated from "a poor crafstman blames his tools." Sorry, my dad is a carpenter.
). So, as so often happens on Bladeforums.com, it is found that several knives are necessary. The next knife our chef would choose would be a slicer. A long, thin(grind
and height) knife that excells at making thin slices of large cuts of meat.
Next would come the steel and the other knives most often seen in knife block sets that are named after thier function -- boner, parer, cleaver, bread knife, butcher knife:
This is what I think of when I hear "butcher knife", anyway. I don't own one, but I speculate that it is a combination of a slicer(from the length) and a skinner(from the belly), with enough stiffnes to serve as a boner to be used for processing meat into it's particular cuts -- something that is becoming a lost art known only to those in the meat cutters union, cooking school, or the self-reliant hunter. Seriously, ask your old lady if she can bone a chicken. After she's done beating your ass, ask your grandma the same thing and I'm sure she'll say yes.
One needs only to visit the kitchenware section of a large department store or a Williams Sonoma to see a full line of cutlery. There is a specialized blade for every specific type of cut. For example, you can find sets of three paring knives, all of the same length: regular, sheepsfoot, and tourne', or bird's beak(like a karambit). One may be sufficient, but each has it's own niche.
As for "what makes a Santoku better than a chef's knife?", you have to first look at the introduction of the santoku to our western cuisine, thanks mainly to Rachel Ray for popularizing it. The santoku has a seldom noticed advantage. The high height of the blade allows the ham-fisted user to chop and whack at things without thier (hairy) knuckles hitting the board. It also gives another 1/2" or so of blade to be used as a scoop/scraper for transfering the food to the bowl or pan.
This concept was not new to western cuisine, the offset handle has been around in commercial cutlery for at least as long as I've been looking at the catalogs. Shun used this for thier "Alton's Angles" line, which was the Shun Classic line with an offset handle.
Japanese style knives don't fit into the paradigm of western cutlery, but they are useful none the less. There are some drool worthy examples of japanese-style blades just in this cooking forum. Butch is making some of the nicest knives I've ever seen, and I can't wait to buy one.
I always solved the knuckle problem by moving closer to the edge of the board. And that brings me to my last point -- You're only going to know which knives work best for you by using them. I reach most often for the 4" parer or the 6" chef (which I consider to be more of a utility knife), even though it would be more manly to use my biggest knife. When it comes to slicing bread, which I am doing more often thanks to the recent gift of a bread machine(that'll be another thread), there is only one knife that gets used -- you guessed it, the bread knife, 'cause it's serrated(and crazy sharp).
So cut away, my culinarily inquisitive friend, and you'll find what patterns work best for you.
