Kitchen Knives

[TeeDee]

Due to all the chatter about the more high end bushcrafty sharpies I wonder if the knife aficionados put as much thought and love into their day to day kitchen blades?

Does your appreciation of shiny sharp things extend to preparing the Sunday roast or chopping the veg??

 

[JonathanD]

I use a Stuart Mitchell, my bushcraft knives and mostly a Mora

 

[baggins]

Totally. I have a wide range of kitchen blades, from lovely Japanese ones, german solid blades and some pretty scandinavian ones. Probably got more pricey kitchen knives than woodcraft ones lol!

 

[PoppyD]

 

[Kadushu]

I keep several knives in my bread bin for kitchen duties, amongst other miscellaneous junk.
- Manly Patriot which is pretty much a beefy paring knife. I think there's an Elmax version but I didn't know that when I bought this one in D2.
- Esee JG5 which is a butcher's knife
- Esee 4HM which is too thick for my liking but actually works well so I'm deeply conflicted and may never recover from this existential paradox. It's like finding out that O1 tool steel has the same toughness as 1095... Aaaaaah!!!!

 

[Robson Valley]

I've been gifted some fancy Porsche kitchen knives. Very nice, they stay in a drawer.

For many decades, I prefer to use the little 6" vegetable cleavers that you can find, grease-packed, in the very back of Asian grocery stores. Besides 3 of those, I have 2 x 8" cleavers. I made heavy cardboard sheaths for each.
The steels are not hard enough to be brittle. The edges hold up well enough for all foods except bone. The little ones tarnish really easily. They always look cruddy-dirty. Perhaps a blessing in disguise, yes?

I bought a half dozen little straight prep knives. Really cheap things but they always do the job and that's all I expect of them. 800 grit 3M wet&dry automotive fine finishing sandpaper on a flat base is all I do for sharpening.

 

[Allans865]

This is stashed in the cupboard for when I'm cooking or preparing dinner.
Only I know where it lives. If it were left to the mercy of the non knife people in the house, it would be trashed and rusty in no time!
It is after all only budget steel but it's the best kitchen knife we have!

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

 

[Allans865]

I use a Stuart Mitchell, my bushcraft knives and mostly a Mora

View attachment 68762

Nice

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[C_Claycomb]

These are what I use in my kitchen. An Ice Bear laminated santoku, stainless cladding and Hitachi Blue Paper core. Will literally split a hair when sharpened well.
The big knife is a laminated blade I bought about 14 years back, probably VG10 core with stainless "Damascus" cladding. Not as sharp as the santoku, but pretty good. Don't like the handle I put on it, but it does work.
The two paring knives are 100% my own with O-1 blades. One has oil finished walnut and the other has stabilised curly redwood for handles.


This is a 12C27 paring knife I made for my dad with another curly redwood handle and paper Micarta bolster. He loves this and tends to use it instead of even the Murray Carter santoku I bought him 20 years ago.

 

[plastic-ninja]

I keep a semi-set of 10 Globals for doing demos & if I’m cooking big batches. Day to day I tend to grab the cheap Japanese supermarket stainless deba, santoku & nakiri that I think I paid about £20 for 20 years ago. They sharpen easily & quickly & are pretty well balanced. I also don’t mind others using them, whereas my “proper chef knives” are off limits to everyone else.

 

[daveO]

My wife snapped one of my global knives in half

 

[C_Claycomb]

My wife snapped one of my global knives in half

I am sorry for your loss, but a bigger part of me thinks that is the best thing anyone could have done with a Global knife. I bought one for a friend and it turned out to be hard to sharpen and held the poor edge it took for very little time. I felt really bad about that gift for a long time. For context, I am happy sharpening O-1, RWL34, CPM3v, D2, S90V, and even S110V, so I reckon the problem with the Globals was they were just too soft.

 

[Robson Valley]

Must be habit, the tools that you get into picking out every day.
For me it's about 50 years of using cleavers. A lot of cutty-cutty, chop-chop
for last night's supper. Knife handles are too close to the bench top to suit me.

My question to go along with this is: what sorts of surfaces do you prefer to cut against in kitchen prep? Woods? Plastics?

I have half a dozen flexible plastic sheets that I can roll up like a trough to pour dice into bowls.

 

[Murat_Cyp]

I am sorry for your loss, but a bigger part of me things that is the best thing anyone could have done with a Global knife. I bought one for a friend and it turned out to be hard to sharpen and held the poor edge it took for very little time. I felt really bad about that gift for a long time. For context, I am happy sharpening O-1, RWL34, CPM3v, D2, S90V, and even S110V, so I reckon the problem with the Globals was they were just too soft.

common problem of many "high end" kitchen knives. I found that relatively coarse stone works better on them when followed by a strop. There are some stones specially made for these "soft" "high end" kitchen knives. But why bother...

 

[Robson Valley]

My kitchen cleavers are expected to have a little bit of a "tooth" to grab and saw/slice food materials. I do all 5 to 600 grit and leave it at that.
My wood carving edges are 1500 then honed.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Vegetables cut nicely with a properly thin, hard blade with a fine edge. I use the white Spyderco ceramics, or a black Arkansas stone, sometimes strop, but not often. Meat in my experience does well with a little coarser edge. I actually use my two big knives to slice bread and they work great with a very smooth crumbless cut provided it isn't hard-crusty like a fresh baguette.
I use wood chopping boards. I have three and a wood bread board. Made one small from quarter sawn oak, big board is commercial rubber wood, long grain, and one is paulownia, which is meant to be super gentle to fine knives. Got my dad one of those but he still manages to roll edges.

 

[Smudge]

Honestly the 2 most used knives in our kitchen are a paring knife I made from a faux bone handled butter knife (reshaped/rehandled/sharpened) and a tramontina breadknife.

 

[plastic-ninja]

I am sorry for your loss, but a bigger part of me thinks that is the best thing anyone could have done with a Global knife. I bought one for a friend and it turned out to be hard to sharpen and held the poor edge it took for very little time. I felt really bad about that gift for a long time. For context, I am happy sharpening O-1, RWL34, CPM3v, D2, S90V, and even S110V, so I reckon the problem with the Globals was they were just too soft.

My main issue with them is that they are too hard! Mine hold the edge for ages but when someone else dropped one on the floor & dinged the edge it took me literally hours to get it out on a diamond stone. I strip them after every use so they stay very sharp.

 

[Kadushu]

Must be habit, the tools that you get into picking out every day.
For me it's about 50 years of using cleavers. A lot of cutty-cutty, chop-chop
for last night's supper. Knife handles are too close to the bench top to suit me.

My question to go along with this is: what sorts of surfaces do you prefer to cut against in kitchen prep? Woods? Plastics?

I have half a dozen flexible plastic sheets that I can roll up like a trough to pour dice into bowls.

Bamboo chopping boards for me. Hard but not too hard and supposedly anti bacterial. The worst chopping board I ever used was at a friends house. It was made of marble ?!?! Funny that all her knives were blunt.

 

[JonathanD]

Emm bought a marble chopping board. Dumbest thing ever, moved it outside to cover a tiny cellar window and got a bamboo one Instead. I suppose they are OK for filleting, but that’s about it.