We cooks accumulate a lot of knives over time
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- August 20, 2021
- 1152
The knives.
Some time ago my wife had one of those days when every possible annoying thing had battered her quiet existence from sunup and relentlessly onward, topped off by being pulled over by one of those eager shaved heads for some silly infraction: a bad tail light, as I remember. The officer asked her if she was armed, and she asked what he meant.
“Any firearms, knives, et cetera?”
As a chef returning from an evening’s work, she had plenty of knives and fessed up.
“Yes, I have a lot of knives in the back seat in my knife roll. I’m a chef.” The officer seemed to accept this truthful information and wrote out an eye-popping ticket to ensure we would spend $1.99 for a new light bulb the next morning.
Cooks accumulate a lot of knives, and in gathering mine to get a photo, I’m actually surprised we don’t have more. It makes me wonder how many we may have displaced or lent. You may wonder why someone needs that many, but I see only gaps that need filled.
There’s an enormous Kramer chef knife from Zwilling, a workhorse Henkel and a new one by Misen. There’s a big, choppy thing by Almazan from Serbia; a sushi knife; a big, serrated bread knife; two butcher knives; a couple of parers; and a utility knife.
Some were pretty expensive and some quite cheap. The workhorse of the bunch is the purple plastic-handled knife by restaurant supplier Mercer, which also is the maker of the long sushi knife. It stays sharp and is easy to handle, and if the dumb thing fails completely, you can pick up another for pocket change.
I couldn’t do without the butcher knives the people at M&M Market got for me ages ago on the cheap. Sometimes you need a straight blade, sometimes a curved one, and it’s nice to have both.
The sushi knife is exactly the thing for separating salmon from skin. It’s long enough to not need a lot of sawing, and the blade is just flexible enough to get a fish filleted without making it look like a cat’s victim.
For peeling, coring and close work, you have to have a couple of good paring knives. The longer one pictured is one of two from the Jamie Oliver collection, and those are my only foray into celebrity chef products. An association with a famous name does not equal quality, and while the two from this line are certainly nicely made, they don’t hold an edge long enough to spread mayo on a hoagie.
The wide cleaver-like knife and the blue-handled Misen are very high carbon steel. They take an edge well and are easy to sharpen, but you really have to be careful to keep them clean and dry, or they discolor. Of course, no kitchen knife should go into the dishwasher. Wash all such knives by hand, dry them completely and store them in a block or, as I’m doing, stuck to a magnet on the wall. We have three long magnets that hold almost all the knives you see. They’re always handy that way, you can visually see what you’re grabbing and counter space is free from a block.
Missing from the collection at my house are a long, thin slicing knife, a proper Japanese cleaver and probably a couple more sushi knives of varying sizes. You can’t have too many books or too many knives.
Choosing knives is a matter of preference. The ones I have are mostly from very reputable makers. A good knife feels comfortable, doesn’t require any special hand position to use beyond correct technique and has good balance. Balance means it doesn’t feel heavy even if it is and that it feels comfortable and ready to use the moment you pick it up.
The absolute paramount thing about any knife you own is to keep it sharp enough to hand to a surgeon, always. The two sharpening steels pictured get regular workouts. Dull knives are dangerous and as annoying as a newly minted, over eager police officer.