Cooking knife!

W

weaksauce

Regular
I'm in search for a cooking knife.

I only want one, which suits for everything, and is very very very high quality. And it must have a good and nice design.

Any ideas?

I'm thinking of a flexible "all-around" knife but is it better with a chef's?

I like the design of global knives, but they seem cheap and only have like "stainless steel". :smile:

I remember seing a brochure or something about some knives from Weber, in the Weber-Style serie. They looked awesome and had like "chromium-molybdenum-vanadium", but I can't find that now. Anyone seem them?

Right now I'm looking at Wusthof and Rosendahl, but I don't know really...

edit: oh shit, actually global has allt that stuf, cro-mo-va 18. So I'd guess they are the best? The have an excellent package with a flexible utility, chef's knife and some other.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
weaksauce said:
I'm in search for a cooking knife.

I only want one, which suits for everything, and is very very very high quality. And it must have a good and nice design.

Any ideas?

I'm thinking of a flexible "all-around" knife but is it better with a chef's?

I like the design of global knives, but they seem cheap and only have like "stainless steel". :smile:

I remember seing a brochure or something about some knives from Weber, in the Weber-Style serie. They looked awesome and had like "chromium-molybdenum-vanadium", but I can't find that now. Anyone seem them?

Right now I'm looking at Wusthof and Rosendahl, but I don't know really...
Click to expand...

I would go with a Global Knife. They are not just 'stainless steel' bug have Vandium added to harden the steel. Some useful info here.
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26036

I have a set of Global knives and am very happy with them. They are very sharp, and cut into my fingers at every opportunity. :)

I think that any of the higher end knives would be fine. I woul go for something that you would be comfortable with.

A 20cm G Series Cooks Knife is a pretty good general purpose knife.

CC
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Check out this bad boy: http://www.eceramic.com/cutlery/kt300hip.htm
Click to expand...
Ceramics are great and all, especially when you're cutting things that have a tendency to oxidize easily (e.g. lettuce, apples, etc). But the real problem is they're just prohibitively expensive.

In my case, being a vegetarian, I tend to put a lot less stress on my knives than most people would -- I'm not cutting through cured meats and tearing sinew and scraping against bone and what not. Sure, I expose it to acidic stuff all the time, but as long as you take good care of it, even very cheap knives will serve you well. For my purposes, even infomercial knives are fine, even though they may not be the most comfortable or the best balanced or anything of the sort. Of course, they're not super durable, but people always do stupid things to knives like putting them in the dishwasher.
 
I've bought some japanese kitchen knifes, nothing fancy, 15-30EUR each. I sharpen them every now and then. I use them everyday ... for a few years now. They are robust, sharp and reliable.
 
I use Global knives - nice design, good quality and not too expensive.

From what I've heard another problem with ceramic knives is that they tend to chip/shatter too easily? Not something you normally encounter with steel!

Chopping stuff up is certainly much easier with a decent quality sharp knife. My one big tip is to do all your chopping before having a beer/glass of wine when cooking. Reduces the risks slightly!
 
Wustoff Chef's knife. You'll want a Chef's for sure as you can dice well with a narrower blade.
 
ChryZ said:
I've bought some japanese kitchen knifes, nothing fancy, 15-30EUR each. I sharpen them every now and then. I use them everyday ... for a few years now. They are robust, sharp and reliable.
Click to expand...

quoted for TROOF!!! :D

does your hometown have a chinatown? If so, i advise going to it, and finding an asian cooking store, and asking in there about maybe testing some knives. They might demo one for you if not let you test it. Even before I moved to China I did this, and I'd never consider another source for cheap, dependable knives. Japanese knives generally use better materials (I gather you are mr. "high-end"... so odd how many ppl can barely even cook but have $200 knives and $300 skillets but I'm sure you're not one of those) and offer more shapes, but if you can handle mere stainless steel *gasp!* then a Chinese knife will save you some money. You should be able to purchase a very sharp and durable knife for $15-35. If you go up to $60 or so you should be able to pick up a rather finely balanced Japanese chef's knife... finger sushi, yum yum! ;9~
 
I cook. I cook ALOT. Did my first Thanksgiving dinner at 13. When your Mom's definition of a good meal is one anyone else prepared and you love good food then you learn to cook young. Now, if you don't cook alot maybe a great knife doesn't matter, but for me it does. I have a se t of Henkel 4 stars that a scrounged for in college. They're good but they've been resharpened enough that they're on their last legs. Wustoff's are next :)

Now that both kids are self-declared vegetarians (at 7 & 9) I don't have quite as much fun cooking, but I still love it and that Quorn shit tastes just like chicken!
 
nelg said:
For the money Lee Valley is a good source.

http://www.leevalley.com/gifts/page.aspx?c=1&p=52770&cat=4,104,53214&ap=1

http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&p=45509&cat=2,40733,40738,45507

and the one I can't do without........

http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&p=32457&cat=2,40733,40738
Click to expand...
I've been buying my significant other one or two Lee Valley / Thiers-Issard knives for Xmas every year, and we have a pretty good collection now. They've served us well so far.

Lee Valley has a nice five piece set: http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=1&p=45520&cat=2,40733,40738,45507
 
Mize said:
I cook. I cook ALOT. Did my first Thanksgiving dinner at 13. When your Mom's definition of a good meal is one anyone else prepared and you love good food then you learn to cook young. Now, if you don't cook alot maybe a great knife doesn't matter, but for me it does. I have a se t of Henkel 4 stars that a scrounged for in college. They're good but they've been resharpened enough that they're on their last legs. Wustoff's are next :)
Click to expand...

man i have no doubt that you do! I can practically tell from the way you post... I cook a lot too, I cook every day a little something new, and have been cooking since I was about eight or nine (latchkey kid). However, I've owned roughly thirty knives in my lifetime and it's from experience that I say I'm through with expensive European knives. Unless you treat your blades so well that you expect them to last a lifetime, they are no better than good, heavy Chinese cleavers and choppers. My style changes enough every five years that I have no need to invest 300 euros in a single blade and live with it forever! But I was only trying to help, suit yourselves! ;D

Edit: one thing I will say about expensive knives is they beat cheap knives -- in sets. Don't buy a cheap knife set, IMO you're wasting your money. Buy each knife individually, get real knives that you can resharpen, and if you notice that a certain knife doesn't suit you or doesn't suit a specific task, buy the next knife accordingly. Everybody needs a different weight and balance (I suppose some pros would disagree!) -- my g/f and I both use different knives for the same tasks.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
poopypoo said:
Unless you treat your blades so well that you expect them to last a lifetime, they are no better than good, heavy Chinese cleavers and choppers.
Click to expand...

You try de-boning a chicken with a cleaver ;-)

You mention specifically expensive european knives. As Global is Japanese does that mean you support them?
I only got more serious about my cooking in the last year or so. I was always a perfectly capable cook, I just decided to be more adventureous. So when I came to doing Chicken stuffed with haggis. I found that the knives I had simply weren't suitable for deboning a chicken. My best knife at the time was a quite large Santoku style knife I got from Chinatown in Manchester, but it was just too big for the job. So I went for the Global deboning knife (after reading some reviews/forums) and was sufficiently impressed that I got myself a couple of their other knives when I saw a good deal (got their meat cleaver for half price :) ).

CC
 
Captain Chickenpants said:
You mention specifically expensive european knives. As Global is Japanese does that mean you support them?
Click to expand...

Hey now, wherefore loose your venom on me, guys? XD i have no qualms with paying more for specialized knives. A flexible boning knife doesn't really need to be $80, but hey, a good knockoff is definitely going to cost you at least $30. But the OP was like, should I get a chef's knife? he's not looking for a specialty knife, he just wants one good all-around blade. Ehh, I could be wrong, like I said before, if you guys want to spend $80 on bread knives, be my guest lol! No quesition, the more you cook different things, the more you're going to need different and better knives. I don't need to argue this with any of you. I'm just saying, if you've used a Chinatown cleaver -- was it not a fine, cheap, all-purpose knife? With proper care, could it not be a primary knife for decades?
 
poopypoo said:
Hey now, wherefore loose your venom on me, guys?
Click to expand...

I didn't mean that in a argumentative way, I was just curious if there was a noticable difference between expensive European (Wusthof etc.) and expensive Japanese. You sounded like you may have some reservation about the European ones but not the Japanese as you mentioned European ones specifically.
The original OP was the one to mention expensive brands. I am just giving my experiences.

A good chinese cleaver is definatley a good general purpose knife, and especially good for a beginner who doesn't want to lose fingers. But they can be a little awkward to wield for anything delicate as the edge of the blade is so far from the handle.
A decentish kitchen knife (not necesarrily an expensive brand) can be easier to use ,but with more finger chopping potential.

CC
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

G
Samsung SyncMaster S27A850D Mini-review
Replies
2
Views
8K
Grall
G
Back
Top