Regardless of what kind of food you prepare these three kitchen knives are essential
Kitchen knives are little like golf clubs; You can buy an entire set but you may find that the you prefer to only use a few of them.
For years my wife and I have been taking turns cooking dinner every night and on some occasions we both cook some rather elaborate meals that requires a fair amount of food preparation.
While we have other knives, we’ve always seem to only use three, a paring knife 4-inch paring knife, an 8-inch Chef’s knife and a serrated bread knife.
Paring knife
Look for a paring knife that has a blade that is 4 – 4 1/2 inches long instead of one with a traditional 3-inch blade.
The longer blade makes the knife more all-purpose, i.e., It can peel apples, mince shallots, slice fruit, mushrooms and cheese.
8-inch Chef’s knife
If you buy only one knife, this is the one to choose. It’s long enough to slice, heavy enough to mince, pointy enough to pare or core, and has a heel to cleave bones.
It’s an all-around workhorse as long as you keep it sharp. Some people prefer a Chef’s knife with little individual scalloped or dished out sections in a row that runs along the sharp edge of the blade which in theory releases bits of vegetables that have a tendency to stick to the blade while cutting them up.
Personally I find the scalloped edge of a blade to be somewhat useless considering the fact that most vegetables contain enough moisture that creates a suction when they are being cut up.
Bread knife
This is the perfect knife for slicing crusty bread because it has a serrated edge which for lack of a better description allows you to saw across even the hardest of breads giving you an even cut. And, you may even find that a bread knife is excellent for cutting into a large beefsteak tomato.
A little about Forged versus stamped kitchen knife blades
Some cooks insist that a forged knife blade is better than one that is stamped.
While that is generally the case for a Chef’s knife because of the types of foods its used to prepare, a paring knife is small so weight and balance are not an issue. The same holds true for a bread knife.
With that, both a stamped paring knife or bread knife will perform adequately as their blades will be much sharper, though both will require sharpening and honing more often.
