What distinguishes a kitchen knife from a utility, camping, hunting knife

Marine24

Marine24

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Jun 15, 2013
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This may be an odd topic to post on this particular forum, as opposed to the more general forums, but I've come to value the thoughts and opinions of my fellow SRK fans.

After picking up a couple Swamp Rat and Busse knives, I realized how underwhelming my kitchen knives were in comparison. These are the knives that I use most often and might as well get them upgraded to be as good as my field knives.

What distinguishes a kitchen knife from a field knife?

Agree that they are really interchangeable. I could use a paring knife as an EDC or one of my choppers to make potato salad, but in general there still seems to be different categories we typically put them in.

Is it just blade thickness? Seems like kitchen knives are typically .10" thick and often around .05" thick.

Doubt kitchen knives are expected to endure the use/abuse we expect of our field knives, which explains the thinner blade and expect should also help when looking for paper thin slices or peeling an apple or potatoe.
 
Kitchen knives are designed to excel (wait for it......) in the kitchen! Field knives are designed to fit the requirements of whatever field chores you find yourself tasked with...... ;)

Here's how Wikipedia defines 'kitchen knife'.......

"A kitchen knife is any knife that is intended to be used in food preparation."

That is a pretty loose definition IMO, basically you could use any knife for food preparation. The problem with this is that most 'field knives' won't be very well suited to food prep.

While kitchen knives are often abused (not by me) they are typically not built to handle this very well. A good kitchen knife typically is made from a thin stock combined with a shallow edge angle that are optimized for cutting efficiency rather than taking abuse.

It's not really necessary IMO to have an entire block full of knives in the kitchen as most of them just end up sitting there unused. Having just a 7" Chef's Knife & Small Paring Knife goes a long ways in the kitchen, if you needed a cleaver I'd think a Bussekin chopper would fill in no problem.

I really like the Victorinox 7" Chef's Knife I got a couple months ago after my "Walmart special" met it's match while beating on a mature coconut. Broke that sucker in two pieces, couldn't have been happier because I knew that I needed a better knife in the kitchen. I think I paid like $35 for it mail-ordered from Bed, Bath & Beyond with a coupon. I'll take some pics of it this afternoon, it's now my most used knife it seems..... :)

On a side note, my pairing knife is pretty horrible and I would like to replace it soon. I've been looking at the Scrap Yard Elmax for this application, but wonder how well they work as a paring knife, anybody got some insight? I'm betting Victorinox makes a good one, but are there any other make/models I should be looking at for a paring knife that is well made but won't break the bank?
 
Funny you mentioned the Victorinox paring knife! The other night I saw an episode of Americas Test Kitchen on PBS, they lauded the Victorinox knife very highly. The other one was a Henkles iirc.
 
I have used everything from Wally world specials to my B11. I have found myself using my "field" knives in the kitchen more and more. I find comfort in knowing that the knife I am using is never going to break while cutting into something hard.
 
I appreciate the edge retention on my field knives in the kitchen and recently used my Sarge 7 to split some frozen baby back ribs. Definitely can see a R5 pr R6 in the kitchen as a Chef's knife and a slimmed down (3/32") RS as a pairing knife.
 
Really the only difference is the timeframe back in the day the best outdoors knives were just large(or small) multi-use butcher/kitchen knives. Look at the old Russell Green River knives they were the only outdoor knife you could get other than a custom or Sheffield Bowie ,later came Marbles and such. Now we are spoiled into thinking we need a knife to split the pelvis of a Buick. That being said I love a nice big copper and Busse knives are the best of the car splitters.
 
Thinness in the edge is where the main difference is IMO. The best knife I've used in the kitchen is a Kiwi brand chefs knife(forget the model) that cost me 5 bucks. It cuts well even when dull because the edge is a nice and thin hollow grind. Something that you can't do with an outdoor blade.
 
I think if you were to get your mits on a lot of mountain men knives from the pioneer era, you would find they were really just heavier duty butcher knives.

The traditional shapes for skinning are really unchanged today if you purchase industrial cutlery for meat processing.

Early "bowie" knives most likely were guard-less (I used the lowercase not proper noun because I think at the time, any long "butcher" style knife would have fit the description).

I often think that sturdier "kitchen" cutlery would make a stellar outdoor knife. Gaucho knives, classic Spanish cowboy knives, are essentially guard-less butcher knives.

Quite a few people really like Old Hickory butcher knives for outdoor use. Some modify the blade shape to be pointier.


I think that a lot of outdoor knives are really overbuilt for my intended uses. Though, I do more chopping and limbing etc with large knives than hatchets and axes. My last camp out I had to so some extended chopping with a long machete to clear paths through Russian Olive trees (nasty thorns) so we could access the pull out spot for the canoe's without having to walk around through a sticky muddy boggy area.
 
HwangJino said:
Kitchen knives should be very thin and sharp, also it should be very light.
Click to expand...

^This.

As other have said, food-prep generally does not require a thick slab of steel for structural support against the cutting medium, and thinner geometry cuts more efficiently if there is sufficient support to complete the cut, so these knives tend to be very thin, and thin = less metal = LIGHT. LIGHT = nimble, reduced fatigue, etc. You could thin-down any bussekin for higher efficiency in the kitchen, but the material in the handle would still over-weight the knife, the balance would be way off, and with the effort to get it that thin, it is more cost-effective to simply buy a knife properly designed for the purpose.

More on the design, in the kitchen and the field I appreciate a minimal guard, tapering of the handle into the blade, and a dropped blade-heel so that the cutting edge extends forward of the fingers. IMHO the Scrapmax is not well designed for the kitchen because the handle and guard are excessive. Of course, it wasn't designed for the kitchen. Neither were the two Muks (a certain third company that shall not be named is LONG overdue for a version) though their shapes are good, but the Hog Muk at least is too heavy (esp. the handle), haven't handled the other. The Nessmuk design is based on a butcher/tradesman knife.

Anyway, that's my $0.02
 
Many of my field knives excel in the kitchen, that said kitchen knives generally only need to cut and cut really well, therefore then can be much thinner with more lateral flex than you would ever want in a field knife, there is very little need for a big chopper in the kitchen (unless you have ever had a roast cooked by my EX !!!!) and then these tasks are delt with by a cleaver that, for food/meat processing, still dones a better job than my NMFBM (yes...I have tried)... ;)

The best analogy is an average field knife will do a great job in the kitchen but even a GREAT kitchen knife will be an average (at best) field blade.

Andy
 
Another thing to consider is that at least some companies run kitchen knives at RC that makes them really brittle, which is not a problem in a knife designed to cut and slice soft materials.

Thin and brittle will break very easily in many outdoor uses.

Chiral, Scrap Muk is a lot lighter than Hog version, but it is quite thick.
 
Andy the Aussie said:
The best analogy is an average field knife will do a great job in the kitchen but even a GREAT kitchen knife will be an average (at best) field blade.

Andy
Click to expand...

Tested that theory last night in the kitchen with my GW and AMS. Both performed well slicing and dicing, but were a little chunky and not as nimble as my normal kitchen knives. Tried using one of my older kitchen knives as a pry bar on a drawer that was jammed and the drawer won. Kitchen knife flexed real well and didn't break, but not enough meat in the blade to break the drawer free.

Wonder what a wooden kitchen knife block would look like for a bunch of Busse "kitchen" knives? Now that would be a chef's kitchen.
 
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