Three must have kitchen knives: chefs knife, bread knife and paring knifeThe 3 most important kitchen knives are a paring knife, a Chef’s knife and a serrated bread knife.

Paring knife

Although a traditional paring blade is 3″ inches in length, look for one that is at least 4″inches long depending on what you vegetables and fruit you usually cut and how you like to cut them. The longer blade is 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 to be somewhat useless considering the fact that most vegetables contain enough moisture that a suction is created and each cut piece is going to stick to the blades edge regardless of it surface configuration.

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, as an added bonus to its capabilities, a bread knife is excellent for cutting into a large beefsteak tomato.


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