How to choose the good kitchen knife among all existing models?
Goyon-Chazeau offers here a list of 10 knives, and some tips, that will revolutionize your kitchen and your way of cooking:
1/ The essential Chef’s knife
This knife is a multi-purpose knife.
Il will allow you to slice, mince, chop, break, open, flatten, lift and handle more or less any food. Opt for a 20cm blade, it is the one that will offer you the larger possibilities.
2/ The Santoku japanses knife
It’s the Japanese equivalent of our chef’s (cooking) knife.
Its wide blade with a curved edge will allow you to chop herbs, easily cut up sticky foods, like fish and raw meat, and mince all types of fruits and vegetables.
3/ The “must have” paring knife
With its thick and very sharp blade about 10 cm, the paring knife will be used to peel, slice and cut all types of food, and to trim meats.
4/ The sandwich knife
It is a thin and long blade knife.
You can use it to slice bread and spread , but also consider it as a long blade (12cm) paring knife, very useful for staying agile in the preparation of large fruits and vegetables, for example.
5/ The classic bread knife
You will easily recognize it thanks to its large toothed blade.
It slices the crust like the crumb of bread without crushing it.
It is also effective for cutting a brioche without breaking it, or for cutting into the thick skin of cucurbits.
6/ The ham knife
The ham knife, has a straight 30 cm blade with a round end and sometimes alveoli.
This knife will allow you to cut thin slices in bulky and a little hard foods such as cooked or dry ham.
The salmon knife, with a blade half the width than ham knife, can also cut ham but its interest is especially in the low adhesion of its thin blade, very useful for making slices in sticky foods such as raw fish.
7/ The peeling knife
Recognizable by its shape (bird’s beak) and its small size, it is very popular for peeling and paring foods that fit in one hand.
It is also very practical for turning and removing damaged parts of fruits and vegetables, hulling strawberries or mushrooms and sculpting your food to obtain aesthetic dishes.
8/ The slicing knife
The slicing knife has a long, sharp, thin and rigid blade, which makes this knife the ideal partner for cutting raw or cooked meat.
The filleting knife is aesthetically identical to the slincing knife but conversely offers a very flexible blade which makes it the ideal knife for lifting fish fillets and making carpaccios in no time at all!
9/ The oriental cleaver
With its thick rectangular blade, it can cut, by striking, pieces of fish or meat without bones (or with small bones).
It is also very handy for coarsely chopping herbs, fruits and vegetables, or crushing garlic cloves.
It should not be confused with the Chinese knife which aesthetically looks a lot like it .
10/ The tomato knife
It is one of the few kitchen knives to be serrated.
Its small teeth facilitate tomatoes cutting – or other soft fruits and vegetables – into thin slices or small pieces without crushing them.
There are many kitchen knives.
The diversity of foods and their properties imply an equivalent variety of knives, with regard to the work to do.
This list is of course not exhaustive and we invite you to explore all the diversity that characterizes this main cooking object!