THE RIGHT KNIFE
Kitchen Knife Set Buying Guide Knives are every cook’s best friend. Cooking is impossible without them. Whether you’re a home cook or a professional, the quality of your knives largely influences your cooking results. Little do most amateur and non-cooks realize that there are more than one type of kitchen knife and each holds their own purpose. Knives aren’t just categorized as big and small. What might sound like fancy names is quite common in the kitchen. Most popular knives, used in a kitchen on a daily basis are chef’s knife, peeler, slicer, paring knife, and so on. All these knives are used to cut different foods. For instance, a chef’s knife and steak knives aren’t used for the same purpose. A knife set usually includes all these types of knives, and some more. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to use every knife in the set, but it sure is nice to have everything at hand, for the times when you might need them. The price of knife sets vary, depending on the material used for its construction, quality of the materials, and the brand name that has been marked on to the product. The safest way to choose a quality product is to stick with a reputed brand, or you could always do a hefty amount of research to locate the best product. Knife sets aren’t always the best way to go, in fact, they aren’t even recommended by most chefs and food magazines. But, if you want decent cutting power, and aren’t focused on perfect individual knives, knife sets will work fine for you. You also get a wooden block to store all your knives, so that’s also a plus.
What Do You Really Need? It’s a must that you have at least 3 or 4 knives for versatile uses. Most essential of them all is a chef’s knife, so that’s what you want your top priority to be. However, purchasing this individually might not always be ideal for all your kitchen needs. A knife set almost always includes a chef’s knife, and along with that, it also comes with other useful knives like bread knives, boning knife, slicers, and variety of other knives. Most manufacturers include these knives and add a bunch of steak knives and other not so important blades, to make the package seem more valuable. Professional chefs and food magazine critics have also commented that most knife set manufacturers sell shorter or not so adequate knives in their package, to make the set more affordable. For instance, you might get a 4 inch boning knife, when in reality; a 6 inch knife would be more appropriate and serve its purpose better. Don’t hesitate comparing between knife sets to pick out the best one. Additionally, it’s good to have a quality storage box. Popular ones are either acrylic or wooden bases. The container that hold the blades perfectly and where all knives are aligned parallel also keeps the knives safe and at the same time it’s easy on the eye.