Kitchen knives can be a little like golf clubs; you can buy an entire set but you may wind up only using only your favorite ones.
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 require a fair amount of food preparation.
While we have quite an assortment of kitchen knives, we always seem to use the same three: a paring knife 4-inch paring knife, an 8-inch Chef’s knife and a serrated bread knife.
Unless you are a culinary artist you can get by with those three for just about any type of food preparation.
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.
