Good Knives Are A Kitchen Necessity

If you love to cook, or even if you don’t LOVE to cook but are forced to do it by the tiny people in your house constantly clamoring for food, you know that knives are essential in the kitchen. Trying to chop with an inferior knife is not only infuriating, it can also be your quick ticket to the ER to have your finger reattached.

So if you are one of the  many cooks out there trying to chop an onion with a steak knife, listen up. You need a few good knives.

Personally I don’t care for a set of knives, other than steak knives. I often don’t need every knife that comes in the set and I feel like it’s a waste of money. I collected my knives slowly over the years from what is called open stock, which just means I bought them one at a time. I added them to my wish lists and let friends and family know that yes, a paring knife would make me very happy for my birthday.

Here are the knives I think every kitchen must have.

Chef’s knife – This is my go-to knife. I use it daily. This is the knife you want to spend some money on, because you can use it on practically everything if you have to. A chef’s knife is typically between 6 and 10 inches long with a large blade that rounds up to a tip. The idea is that the tip of the knife, when the blade is pressed to the cutting board, will rise up from the board to allow for chopping. You will want to choose a chef’s knife that fits comfortably in your hand so that you feel you can adequately control its movement. A knife that is too big or too heavy for your hands is dangerous.

Zwilling J.A. Henckels Chef's Knife

Paring knife – a paring knife is almost a miniature version of the chef’s knife, except its tip does not rise up off the cutting board. This knife is used for making small cuts, peeling and sometimes mincing.

Wüsthof Classic 3" Paring Knife

Carving knife – this is for cutting meats, obviously. It has a long slim blade so that you can easily slice a roast or a ham or that Thanksgiving turkey.

Wüsthof Classic Carving Knife

Bread knife – a bread knife is important because of its serrated blade. When you are slicing bread, you don’t want to smash it so you need something that will cut through the crust but not force you to exert pressure on the bread.

Zwilling J.A. Henckels Pure Bread Knife, 8"

So now that you know what knives are most likely to be helpful in the kitchen, how do you go about picking them? There are lot of options out there and some can be insanely expensive. How do you choose? The first thing is that this is one thing you do not want to purchase online without having held in your hand. Go to a good kitchen store like Williams-Sonoma (which is where I got all these pictures) or Sur La Table and actually ask for some help. Pick up each one and see how it feels. Your perfect chef’s knife is going to have a good weight in your hand but not be so big or heavy that you can’t maneuver it easily.

You also want knives with a full tang. The tang is the main body of the knife, and you want one piece from blade to handle. The handle pieces will attach to the sides of the tang. You want to see the tang running along the spine of the knife. If the knife is not full tang, the blade could break off from the handle, which could be disastrous if it happened while you were chopping something.

Go with a knife with a reputation. Knives are kind of pricey, but they are worth it. So really do take into account the big names who have been making knives for generations, because they know how to do it right. You don’t need a $1,000 chef’s knife (and they exist, trust me) but a good one will cost at least $100 or so.

A good way to collect your knives and save money is to pick the specific knife you want in the store, and then watch the websites (especially Amazon) for when they go on sale. This way you have held the knife and you know it’s the one for you but you can also take advantage of online price comparisons.

If you spend the time to choose and buy good knives, they will last you a lifetime.

Knife block set image from http://www.knifeblocksets.co.uk/
All other images from williams-sonoma.com

Posted by DonnaM for Buy-Her.com.

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Some kitchen gadgets look cool.

And some kitchen gadgets are overpriced pieces of crap that are way too much work to use than the original tool they were meant to replace.

I do a lot of chopping and dicing and cutting into little pieces in my quest to use fresh ingredients to make real, healthy food.  It’s my least favorite part of cooking.

So, in a moment of weakness in a William Sonoma store in Charleston, I splurged on a $50 chopper.

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Read the rest of Friday Flop: William Sonoma Professional Multi-Chopper

Posted by missbritt for Buy-Her.com.

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