I would not consider that a specialty knife, although it might've been 15 years ago; great general purpose knife.


All one really needs is a chef's knife, paring knife, cleaver, & bread knife.
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agree 100%
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In my opinion, the minimum knives needed;

Chef's
Bread
Paring
Utility
Carving
Slicing
Boning
Butcher
Fillet

A Utility knife is the best tool for task like slicing mushrooms, garlic, radishes or shallots for a salad when only a little is needed, and cutting tomato for a sandwich or a sandwich for that matter, when a paring knife is to small and a chef's knife to large.

If you roast large cuts of meat or turkeys, a carving knife will do a much better job than a chef's knife when it's time to get the meat to the platter.

For getting really thin cuts of roast meat for sandwiches a slicing knife is hard to beat.

The last 3 are task oriented knives that may not get allot of use (depending on how you prep/shop), if you buy whole poultry, fish, primal cuts of beef or pork, rabbits etc. they are hard to get by without.

Having a thinner blade than Chef's knives, Butcher knives are a good choice when breaking down meat that's headed for the grinder or the stew pot.

Specialty cutlery that gets a lot of use in my kitchen,

Cheese knife
Poultry shears
Kitchen shears
Salmon/Ham knife
Oyster knife

Lets not forget a carving fork and honing steel. While the steel will not sharpen your knives, it will straighten the edge and prolong the time between sharpening.
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Great thread guys! As a professional chef, it's great to see "regular" folk talk about gear with the same zeal as us sleep-deprived crazy souls. :-)

However, you really don't need a zillion knives to work effectively in the kitchen. Let me dispel a few myths...

I've never actually seen anyone in a professional kitchen use a utility knife (i.e. a mid-sized knife in limbo between a large chef knife and a small pairing knife), and that's because you can do 99% of jobs with a chef's knife. Anything more intricate (e.g. cutting patterns into vegetables and other fancy stuff) needs a pairing knife, or if you're into barrelling veggies (very rare other than in super-fancy restaruants) you'll need a turning knife.

Also in an ideal world you would use a serrated tomato knife to cut tomatoes, but in practice a really, really sharp chef's knife does the job just as well.


All those beautifully-cut, paper thin slices of meat in your deli sandwich and at restaurants? Gravity slicer, baby!


True (especially with regards to the boning knife), but the vast majority of professional food suppliers and retail stores will supply major cuts of meat already de-boned, as there is huge competition between suppliers. The largest cuts of meat I have to prep are pork bellies (i.e. the whole underside of the pig plus ribs) and a chef's knife is perfect.

A fillet knife for fish is indispensable if you prep a lot of fish. You need that long, flexible blade to slide in between the bones and for neatly taking the skin off. I've tried to fillet bream with a rigid chef's knife, and failed miserably. :-)


So to sum up, the absolute minimum you'll need is:

A quality chef's knife... yup, that's it. And depending on your kitchen, you'll certainly need a bread knife (if you prep a lot of bread, I personally don't), a fillet knife (if you prep a lot of fish, I do), a cleaver (if you have to split a lot of bones, I do) and maybe a pairing knife if you're doing fancy garnishes (although you can just use the tip of your chef's knife in most cases). Easy!

Oh, and for the record I use Henckels 4-Star knives... I like the weight although I'm looking to change to a thinner blade... :-)


I'm sure MPW would agree:

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I find it very hard to believe that these two people are the same person.

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Harpo,

I can imagine it's rare in a professional kitchen that one is splitting a sandwich for two or cutting a few mushrooms for a salad, a quality chef's knife may be the end all...

Cooking for the wife and I alone, the utility knife gets more use on a daily basis than just about any other.

The bread knife does double duty, bread and tomatoes. I make bread (don't own a bread maker), and buy fresh unsliced bread from a bakery.

A restaurant or deli may have the room and need of an electric gravity slicer, I don't. The 14” slicer get used a couple times a month, enough to justify having it.

For Frenching chops and ribroast, removing silverskin, opening chops that are to be stuffed etc. a 6” boning knife is much easer to use than a 14” chef's knife. Yes I use a chef's knife with a 14” blade, also the reason I use paring knives to peel fruit and veg.

I collected antique butcher tools and cutlery for years, had over 300 blades when I met my wife.

My heavy knives are carbon steel, made by the now defunked Gustav Emil Ern, and are 40 to 60 years old, all where unused when I acquired them (new old stock).

The paring, utility, fillet & slicing knives, are nogent style Sabatier. Recently ground from forgings that are more than 60 years old.

Check this http://www.thebestthings.com/knives/sabatier_nogent.htm
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Shun are perfect. I always had Henckels or Wusthof until I got into the restaurant industry. Now I use a Shun. They're so great.
Globals are nice, but personally I don't like my knife to feel so light in my hand. That's why I like Shun. They're a great middle ground between the heavy German knives and the airy Globals. I like to feel a little bit of heft in my hand while I'm cutting.
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