4.1 Choosing your knives

A cook does not need a drawer full of knives. Three knives cover almost every cutting job in a home kitchen, so a boxed set is not worth buying.

The knives a cook needs

The chef's knife is the one used most. At a pinch it can do all of the daily cutting on its own: dicing onions, cutting potatoes, cutting meat into smaller pieces, cutting greens. Its bigger blade makes the work faster and easier than a smaller knife does.

Chef's knives come in two main shapes:

• A western-style chef's knife has a strong curve toward the tip, so the blade can rock on the board for fast chopping.
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• A santoku is a Japanese-style chef's knife, with a flatter edge and a wide blade. Some santokus have small hollows, or divots, along the side, meant to help food come off the blade; whether they really do is open to doubt.
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The paring knife is the small knife, and the second most used. It is for close, careful work, such as breaking down a chicken or cutting small fruits and vegetables. A bird's beak paring knife has a blade that curves down to a sharp point, for peeling and for digging out the core of a fruit or vegetable.

A serrated knife has an edge cut into small teeth. On an offset serrated knife, the angle of the handle lets it sit in the hand the way a chef's knife does. The teeth cut through a tough skin without crushing the soft inside.

A serrated knife suits several jobs:

• bread
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• tomatoes, pineapple and eggplant
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• cutting a sandwich in half
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• slicing cake layers apart
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Other knives are useful for some cooks and some jobs.

None of these extra knives is essential:

• A boning knife is a nice extra, about $25, that does a few jobs very well.
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• A utility knife does not get much use, though some cooks find it fits the hand well.
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• A slicing knife is worth buying only for a lot of roasting or sushi making.
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Try a knife before you buy it

A knife a personal thing. It does not have to cost a lot. It does not have to be the knife you saw a famous chef use.

He suggests working in steps:

• Decide how much you can afford to spend.
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• Find out about the knives at that price.
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• If you can, go to a knife shop or a good kitchen store and hold the knife.
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• Check that it feels comfortable and right for you. A knife that sits well in one cook's hand may not sit well in yours.
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Two kinds of store are good places to try knives: a shop that specializes in knives, and a kitchen store with a large knife counter. Kitchen stores of that kind are found in many places, with a good selection to hold and compare.

If there is no store near you, buying online works too. Choose a seller that takes returns. Then, if a knife does not feel right in your hand, send it back.

A good knife review also helps a lot. If you know you like lighter knives, a review tells you how heavy a knife is. Japanese-style knives tend to be lighter than German-style or French-style ones.

How to choose a knife

With the knife in your hand, feel for two things: it should feel good in the hand, and it should be balanced, with the same weight in front of the grip as behind it. A chef's knife also needs a blade long and wide enough to scoop food off the board. The handle material matters little.

Length is the next choice. A 10-inch chef's knife gives more control; a true beginner with no knife skills may do better with an 8-inch one. Paring knives are usually about 3 inches long, though a 4-inch one comes close to a utility knife, which is usually 5 or 6 inches.

The metal matters for sharpening. A blade of low carbon steel, often darkened with use, sharpens very easily. A blade of harder high carbon steel takes more work to sharpen. Sharpening and honing are covered in a later topic.

Cheap or expensive?

There are two sound views on what to spend.

A good tool does not have to cost a lot. Three good knives can cost about $75 together. A chef's knife of about $40 can do nearly as well as a Japanese one costing about $300, which may be only about 10% better, and the cheaper knife is easier to bring back to sharp; a Japanese knife takes more skill to sharpen well. A serrated knife is hard to sharpen at all, so buy one for about $30 and use it until it is dull, which for a home cook takes many years. The brands found in professional restaurant kitchens are much alike.

Good knives also repay their cost over time: bought well, they last a lifetime, even though the cost seems big at the start. Even then, a cheap paring knife is the one to keep for rough jobs, never an expensive one.

Either way, buy single knives, not a set, and choose each one for the cooking you actually do.