What kind of kitchen knives do you use?

N

NFMee

Joined
Oct 26, 1999
Messages
364
What kind of kitchen knives do everyone use. I'm about to be outfitting a kitchen, and I'm looking for the right knives. I know I want to buy more or less a 10" chefs, an 8" slicer, a paring knife, and a serrated utility (6-8") I think that's all I need to start.

I've seen all the standard brands, and I'm initially drawn to Sabatier. I like the light weight, great balance, and the round bolsters allow lots of control. (this is at least for the chefs and slicer)

Who uses what, what do you think? Especially if you use a more uncommon brand or customs.

Thanks

Nathan
 
My wife has a 6 7/8" Spyderco utility knife with SpyderEdge (MBS-26); a 7" A.G. Russell chef's knife that is very sharp and stays that way; and two Kyocera ceramic knives...a 3" paring and a 5 1/2" cook's.

Would not hesitate to recommend any of them...if I had to choose just one it would be the AGR..you really need to be careful with this knife in the kitchen :)
 
I'm looking around, myself. I went to a mall outlet this past weekend where name brand knives, even moderately priced, are from 50 to 100 dollars. Because of the Edge Pro, we are looking for non-serrated models; we'll probably start with the mid sized models, +4 inches but less than 8 inches, as good all around types.

The real customs are just out of our reach until I go back to work full time.
 
We got a set of Henckels chef knives as a wedding present - I use the 6" and 8" knives the most for cooking.

I also bought a Sabatier paring knive and a bread knive from Lee Valley - they are excellent.

Cleaver is a Chinatown special that is forged.
 
For traditional western style I like Wusthoff or Henkels, I have two japanese with the one sided grind that are excellent, and a couple of chinese cleavers (not expensive and often handy). I often use a hunting knife in the kitchen (usually a Buck 105), and a Rappala fishing knife (I put a toothy coarse edge on this one, it´s great for slicing bagels and tomatoes), I have a couple of serrated knives but really don´t use them much.
 
Got a set of those 4 basically that you described for $7 clearance. Chicago Cutlery, High Crabon. For kitchen knives, as many other knife things, I'm old fashoined. Reoil the wooden handles with vegetable oil periodically, keep them clean, hold a great edge, and easy to resharpen
 
I favor thin blades with alloys that allow a harder edge than your typical German or French blade. This generally means something made in Japan. Japanese AUS-8 works pretty well. It can be hardened to RC-58 or so and takes a razor edge easily. The Japanese MBS-26 alloy that Spyderco is a bit better. AUS-10 or VG10 are better yet. If you are willing to go with the soft plastic handles that Spyderco uses, they are the best. When I bring 20 different knife varieties down to the soup kitchen for the volunteers to try they prefer the original series of MAC knives.

http://www.macknife.com/page6.html

BTW. I'm not sure what you think the advantage is in a knife with a bolster. I use very thin knives and have never felt that I needed any additional stiffening to the blade. The type of bolster that is a thickened strip at the heel of the blade (common on German forged blades) is a real liability. Most kitchen work is best done on a cutting board. You want your entire edge to be able to contact the cutting board. If your edge is straight you can theoretically press the whole edge onto the cutting board and cut a great length of material at the same time. Simultaneously cutting more than 4" of material in one chop takes a lot of force. The best compromise is to have a blade with a slight convex curve so that a slight rocking motion allows you to cleanly cut a large width of material on your board. What you need to avoid is having a concave section on your blade that can't reach the cutting board. If you have a bolster on the heel of your blade you can't sharpen the heel of your blade and the blade becomes concave as you sharpen it. You have to take a grinder of some sort to remove part of the bolster to maintain your concave blade contour.

I have not liked the stainless steel in a couple Sabatiers that I tried. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't any better than you would find in comparitively inexpensive Forschner knives. If you want well designed knives with pretty good materials I would look at Forschners. What I do like are the Al Carbon (nonstainless carbon steel) blades from Sabatier. This takes a really wicked edge and is great for carving. The trouble is that most people don't dry them properly and they rust like crazy.
 
Oops I had a typo in my previous post. Where I said: "You have to take a grinder of some sort to remove part of the bolster to maintain your concave blade contour." I meant to say: "You have to take a grinder of some sort to remove part of the bolster to maintain your convex blade contour."
 
FYI ... my kitchen cutlery collection includes a carbon steel Sabatier chef's knife, a wonderful old (~50+ years I believe) Case slicer, a fine Japanese cleaver, and some other "high end" blades. I have some decent stainless parers and a SS chef's knife for messy/wet use, and stuff like cabbage that you don't want to use carbon steel on.

But my real "working favorites" are some very inexpensive Old Hickory knives I picked up 20+ years ago. Just simple, 1095 carbon steel blades with hardwood handles held on with brass cutlery rivets, but a real joy to use, and all will take and maintain a very keen edge with little effort. The Old Hickory large French chef's knife, 8" slicer and 6" boning knife I highly recommend, and if you need a butcher knife (I'm nearly vegetarian these days) they make a decent one. The Old Hickory parers aren't the best IMO, although the 3" (model #703 I think) is a sturdy, full-tang knife. Some will require a bit of work to clean up the factory bevels to knife knut standards, but after that, edges are easy to maintain with porcelain and/or steel.

So, for $20-$25 or so, your kitchen can be very well armed indeed. Of course, knives like Old Hickory aren't going to tickle the fancy of all blade enthusiasts ... but from my standpoint, I'd much rather have the $100's I can save on kitchen cutlery available for other, interesting toys.
 
Jeff -- I was speaking about the carbon steel in the sabatiers. I really like their 8" slicer. besides that their stuff isn't that interesting. Their bolsters are much smaller than the german style, and allow the entire blade to be sharpened. I see what you mean about that, though, some of my dad's old Henkel's almost look like they have a recurve

there is another company called Messermeister (endorsed by Chris Reeve, coincidentally) which makes german-style knives with recessed bolsters which allow sharpening of the entire blade.

I like the look of the thin japanese blades, such as the global's, or the spyderco's, but I am still inclined to have one big, heavy, german style chef's, for chopping heavy stuff (i.e. bunch of carrots)

There is pretty good information on all this at Professional Cutlery Direct

so... Maybe a big german Messermeister Chef's, a Sabatier carbon slicer, a spyderco serrated utility and some-or other paring. coming together

Who has experience with the Spyderco Kithcen cutlery??
 
I just recently got a full set of Lamsonsharp knives from Lamson and Goodnow. Handmade, right in the USA.

I had a couple bonus reasons to go with Lamson but they would have been a strong consideration anyway. I much prefer the nice wooden handles they come with to the typical black ones you see on kitchen knives. I know a person that works in the factory grinding the blades, and got him to buy them at employee cost for me, so I got a great deal. Plus, they come with a lifetime warranty, and the factory is only a 20 minute drive from my office if I ever need one repaired or replaced. Free sharpening for life too, but I would do that myself anyway.
 
I have 3 sets. My daily is the Global with 6 pieces (10" Cook, 8" Cook, 7" Santuko, 6" Boning, 5" Utility, and 3" Paring). These are amazingly sharp.

The backup set (which sits right next to it), is my old Pre-FiskarGerber Balance Plus series, with 10 pieces (10" Chef, 10" Slicer, 8" Chef, Cleaver, 6" Boning, 6" Utility, 2 3" Paring, Cooking Shears, Sharpening Steel). They're still in use because they're not completely dead yet.

My last set was a set of OXO MV Metal Series that someone gave me as a present. Felt good in hand, but I don't know how well they cut yet.

But the one that gets used the most is my $20 Dexter Chinese Cleaver.
 
I have a bunch of different kitchen knives. My all-time favorite is this Hattori santoku in Cowry-X:

bgknife1418.jpg


It's beautiful, fits my hand well, and is extremely easy to sharpen.

Thomas Haslinger is a chef who also makes knives. I have one of these:

NewGenImbuyian.JPG


In addition I have a bunch of Global knives which I prefer over the German style knives, and recently picked up a Fallkniven PP23, which I haven't made up my mind about yet.

A great place to go see a wide variety of knives is Blade Gallery. Daniel O'Malley has placed knives with chefs all over the world, and it is an area that he seems to be ahead of anybody else in terms of Internet sales.

Knives for Chefs at Blade Gallery
 
I use a Cold Steel Recon Tanto or a Buck Special for most kitchen jobs. They cut better than the Cutco knives I unwisely purchased. I still use the smaller Cutcos for cutting small things, but at this point the Buck sees the most work.:D The Recon Tanto performs better, but I usually only use it when I have a lot of food to cut sinc eit is high carbon.
 
An underlying thread I've noticed here is "...easy to sharpen..." Been my experience over the years the easier a blade is to sharpen, the more often it requires sharpening. I have found these two events to be directly proportional to each other.
 
My cousin's husband is a chef and he likes the Forschners that Jeff mentioned. I've been thinking about buying a set for myself.

gaben--that Haslinger knife is a beauty, too bad I can't afford one.
 
Don,

Edge retention versus ease of sharpening is a complicated issue relating to resistance to deformation, abrasion resistance, and so on. There are plenty of hard to sharpen edges that don't hold well.

To be more precise, what I meant was "it is easy to fix edge deformation using a Global steel." I can feel the deformations very clearly, and with a couple of passes on the steel, they are gone. Subjectively using a thumb test, the knife feels "sharp" again.

By using a steel each time I use the knife, I haven't felt the need to sharpen the knife on a wetstone. My understanding (and my experience) is that using a steel regularly substantially lengthens the life of an edge.

My understanding is that the edge of this knife is at RC 67, yet I see no evidence of cracking or chipping that would ordinarily be present for non-Cowry-X steel at that hardness.

In comparison, I haven't really figured out the Fallkniven PP-23 Santoku yet. It feels really skatey to me when I try to steel it. It could be a lot of things including my not understanding the edge geometry of the PP-23 well enough yet to handle it properly. I need to check and see if it is a convex edge, which might explain why it feels different to me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top