One Knife | Which Knife?

If you could only own 1 knife

Most cooks, chefs, and even those that do not know how to cook, own a drawer full of knives. Knives are passed down from one person to another, and sometimes they are picked up at whatever eye catching sale is on.

Two of the biggest perceived obstacles that terrify new cooks are the prep work and the cooking times. We can actually see in many ways those two are tied together. Cutting up the vegetables, meats, and the like are tied to cooking time. It takes much longer to cook a whole head of cauliflower or a pot roast then if you cut either of them up into smaller, more manageable pieces. This allows the heat source to dive right in there and cook the food much more evenly.

This means that one of the very basic things to cut down on the overall cooking time is to handle the process of prepping the food. This leads to our subject of the day, the lowly kitchen knife. After all, before we invented a pot, a pan, we figured out we needed to cut our food into smaller pieces to eat it. Starting with sharp wood and rocks and progressing to fancy steel we learned the value of a sharp knife.

Sharp Options

And that is single biggest issue facing the average home cook. We often do not own a SHARP knife. When we take a step back and go to that drawer of knives or silverware we usually do what I call “Grab and Go”. Then we grab whatever is the easiest knife that we think is closest to the size we need and go to town mashing down with it on whatever calls itself our food.

The process of cutting foods intimidates many new cooks, either due to the fear of hurting themselves or the lack of knowledge on cutting. Professional chefs often make it worse by putting forth this seemingly mystical journey they project. If you do not have just the right knife and hold it just so, your food will taste horrible and your meal will end in misery, so they say.

Flavorful Goal

Here at Flavorful Science, our goal is to take the mystery away. We lower the barriers allowing everyone to craft, yes craft, a great meal with the fewest steps and curse words possible. Now, on to that drawer of banged up, dull knives!

As an avid foodie and science geek I am often poking professional chefs, and all my favorite adopted “grandmas” for their thoughts on these types of subjects. A kitchen knife is more important than almost any other kitchen too. Ever notice how your grandma or grandpa seemed to use one knife for almost everything in the kitchen? Stores try to sell you a whole set anyway. I will go with grandma every time.

You really only need one sharp knife. Yes, I am definitely going to hear about this one, but it is the simple truth. Two would be nice but you can easily survive on one. Use the extra money to buy a pot in which to cook the food instead, which is another episode.

Start with One

Okay, we know we need one knife to rule them all so which one is it? After all there are literally hundreds of different styles, flat, curved, pointy, European, Japanese and more. The reality is, we need one that is comfortable in our hand. It doesn’t need to feel like a samurai sword or a battle axe, and can cut up some carrots, celery and a potato. Why those vegetables? Carrots are a fairly hard vegetable which definitely causes you to work too hard if your knife is too small, or too big. Celery is a long and straight fibrous vegetable that allows you to concentrate on the cutting through the strands. Our final participant is the lowly potato. They are bulky, somewhat hard to cut through and rarely the same shape or size. Our one knife can handle those three items will tackle most other foods too.

So we know it cannot be too big or too small. You want a knife that is at least six to eight inches, roughly fifteen to twenty one centimeters, long. That will be long enough AND short enough to handle most kitchen tasks. The shape of most widely available knives in this size category boil down into two shapes, either the Chef’s Knife and the Santoku Knife. The Chef’s Knife, also known as the Cook’s Knife, was originally designed primarily to take apart large cuts of meats. The Santoku Knife, designed to cut smaller vegetables and meats, is gaining in popularity.

Chef’s Knife

The Chef’s Knife is famous for the ability to quickly rock back and forth dicing up everything from herbs to vegetables and then adding the ability to carve up your larger main course as well. Consumers watch in amazement as TV personalities whip thru a stack of veggies with a chef’s knife glinting and moving at a blurring pace.

Santoku Knife

Many home foodies are choosing our second choice of a Santoku Knife. The Japanese Santoku knife is named and designed for the three main purposes of cooking, slicing, dicing and mincing. Santoku knives are great for new cooks as well as those with deeper knife skills. Although generally not seen as often in a western professional’s hands, it holds up in the average kitchen very well.

There are a LOT of variations available in each mostly in overall shape, materials and edge type. In reality, as consumers that will actually use the knife we are only concerned about a few things. First, is it comfortable to hold. I understand that most knives will feel uncomfortable at first but does it fit your hand? Do your fingers seem to know how to hold it? If so, great first step. The second item is how will we honestly treat it?

ANY knife must be sharpened or replaced routinely. There used to be a lot of late night Television advertisements for kitchen knives that never need sharpening. They were and still are dangerous garbage. If you take care of the knife making sure it is clean, dry, and stored so it cannot bang into other things, then you can spend just a bit more to get a knife that will stay sharper longer.

Starting Out

A decent starter knife can be found for about 30 U.S. Dollars, although upping the limit to 50 dollars really opens up the selections. Yes, you can buy cheaper knives, but they will dull quickly. Often many are not sharp across the whole blade, and made out of cheap stamped metal that will frustrate your hands and endanger your fingers. I meet a lot of people that will spend fifteen or twenty dollars on a restaurant meal they get to enjoy once and cringe at spending 40 bucks on a tool they will use routinely. Trust me, buy the good knife with the money. Thrn fix several great meals and take the savings and buy flowers for that special someone. You, and they, are worth it!

My choices for the brand new, lightly experienced, or those tight on a budget:

Victorinox Fibrox 8 inch Chef’s Knife
Victorinox Fibrox 7 inch Santoku

Next Level Up:

Wusthof 8 inch Chef’s Knife
Wusthof 4183 Santoku Knife

Pro Level – Pro Level knives are usually sharper and stay sharper but require care as they are usually more brittle. Do not sharpen Japanese knives on a standard kitchen knife sharpener as their blade edge is not V Shaped and not at the same angle as most western style knives. These knives are usually right handed or left handed models with blades sharpened to match.
Mac MTH-80
Shun DM0706 Classic 8-Inch Chef’s Knife

Honorable mentions

DALSTRONG Santoku Knife – Shogun Series – AUS-10V Japanese Steel 67 Layers – Vacuum Treated – 7″ (180mm)
ZELITE INFINITY Santoku Knife 7 Inch