Best of the Best

The chef’s knife is the workhorse of the kitchen’s armamentarium. In my kitchen, it is the knife I use 90 to 95 percent of the time for the myriad of cutting jobs that meal preparation involves. My motto when it comes to chef’s knives is that “bigger is better (or at least more useful).” A chef’s knife with 10-inch long blade will make the cutting of large items easier because there is enough blade to allow you to effectively slice (think of always cutting with a sawing motion) back and forth as you cut. For small items only a portion of the blade is required, and depending upon what you are cutting, you’ll only use the tip, the center, or the heel of the cutting edge. You may think that a smaller chef’s knife is safer and easier to use, but my experience during knife skills classes has been that when using the proper pinch grip, students, even those with small hands, become quite comfortable with this big knife after an hour or so of use. Safety, as with any knife, comes from keeping the blade sharp and using it correctly. There are many well-known professional chefs that prefer a shorter 8-inch blade, but I have found the longer blade to be more versatile.

You can spend hundreds of dollars on a good chef’s knife. The more expensive examples usually have fancier handles and blades made from steel that will hold an edge longer. From a use standpoint, the appearance of the handle is unimportant. The handle must feel good in your hand, or at least in your middle, ring, and pinky fingers since your thumb and forefinger will be pinching the blade with the classic “pinch grip” that chefs use with most knives, but how it looks does not matter while you are slicing.