Published April 21, 2011.

Today I am going to write about knives. I can tell you from personal experience that it is easy to let a kitchen knife fascination get out of control. It is also easy to overstate them as a cutlery imperative. When you get down to it, anything with a reasonably sharp edge will do for almost all situations. But, a well-chosen knife can spare the home chef a lot of frustration and probably some time as well.

The ever-increasing interest Americans are showing in cooking has led to a sometimes confusing proliferation of kitchen gadgetry. Popular TV chef Alton Brown has even engaged in a personal war against task-specific cooking implements, but the frugal Mr. Brown has also endorsed a fancy line of Shun knives.  Most home chefs will begin their culinary education with a simple, stamped and ground stainless-steel knife.  They are the hand-me-down bicycles of the cutlery world but they will do for most people’s needs.

A stamped knife is cut from a larger piece of flat steel plate. An edge is then ground onto it to provide the cutting surface. The plain truth is that these knives do not hold their edge very well but my mother has gotten by with her block of Cutco stickers for several decades. I may grouse about them when I visit, but I won’t argue with their basic utility.

Top: MAC 8 inch dimpled chef's knife. Middle: Wusthof 6 inch dimpled santuko knife. Bottom: Kyocera 5 inch ceramic nikiri knife.

Nicer, and therefore more expensive, knives are forged. This means thin layers of steel are folded and hammered onto each other or a larger piece of metal is heated and beaten until the shape of the knife emerges. Imagine the difference between a medieval blacksmith working away on his anvil and a powerful pneumatic press stamping out coins.

If the steel was all of the same quality then the method of fabrication would be less important.  A stamped knife made with excellent steel will likely produce a satisfactory, lifelong tool. However, stamped knives are generally made from less expensive materials and thus tend to be softer and therefore lose their edge faster. Once dull, they are also harder to return to a sharpened state. Forged knives are generally made from steel that is harder, more stain-resistant and flexible without being brittle. I am no metallurgist but my understanding is that the addition of small quantities of elements like chromium, molybdenum and vanadium all have a profound impact on the quality of the metal alloy used in knife making.

When trying to determine if you are handling a forged or stamped knife the easiest way differentiate them is to examine the thickness. If the knife is uniformly thick from the backside to just before the cutting edge then chances are you have yourself a stamped knife. If it tapers gently toward the business end, then your knife was probably forged.  I prefer forged knives because you can tend to expect better steel.

Beyond the basics of how the knife is made there are other, more subjective criterion to consider. Visit a fancy cooking store and ask to handle the knives. You may find that the balance of a Wusthof suits your hand better than the knobby handle of a Global or that the ergonomic curve of certain Henckel’s rests just like you like it in your palm.

For many years I was a Wusthof man, then I moved on to the Japanese knife maker Shun.  Once the diced vegetables ceased their flying and my checking account returned to normal, I finally settled on a chef’s knife made by another Japanese manufacturer, MAC. Aside from fitting my hand well, many of their knives have a scalloped blade, which means that less of the surface area of the blade itself is pressed against the food you are cutting and thus less drag is created. Cutting through a few pounds of onions or a large joint of beef was never so easy.

Knives these days come in many different shapes. This is largely the influence of Japanese style knives on our dicing habits.  The most popular knife shape, aside from the traditional, pointed chef’s knife, is the santuko. It features a rounded point more suited to chopping vegetables than taking apart a roasted chicken, but some people prefer them and they look awfully cool. The santuko is the general purpose, chef’s knife of the Japanese kitchen. A less common but notable blade shape is the nakiri. A nakiri blade has a flat, cleaver style end and is almost exclusively used to slice vegetables.  There are many other shapes, some just for slicing certain types of sushi, but that would be wandering too far afield.  Many a chef has been served through their entire career by a traditionally shaped knife. Knife style is another subjective issue of personal preference. Go with what appeals to you or give a few different styles a try.

There is one other modern innovation that is worth noting. Many companies are now producing ceramic knives. I have a bad habit of cutting myself with every new knife I buy and none so seriously as when I purchased a Kyocera, nikiri blade. They are devilishly sharp things and not for the amateur. Ceramic knives, properly used and maintained, do not dull easily. I have been regularly julienning my way through mounds of vegetables with mine for two years and it still cuts like it did the first day I laid my finger open with it.  The drawback to ceramic knives is that they will dull, chip or break entirely when used to cut hard foods or twisted under pressure. I would not even cut a hard cheese with one much less get it near bone-in meat. But nothing slices a tomato or takes care of a pile of un-deconstructed mirepoix like a ceramic knife.  All nice kitchen knives should be hand–washed and well looked after but a ceramic knife requires even more attention as even improper storage can lead to a cracked blade.

In this already over-long discussion I have ignored paring knives, filet knives, cleavers and many other familiar implements. All those things have their place but the single most important tool in the kitchen is a good, primary knife. Once you have settled on which knife expresses who you are as a cook and a human being then love it and treat it well. Never let it sit in the sink, never cut on a ceramic or metallic surface and never think of putting it on a whetstone. A sharpening steel, the truncheon-like rod made famous by cooking shows and horror movies alike, is all you will need to keep your knife in good order. If the steel ceases to bring the blade back to a satisfactory level of sharpness then take to a professional knife sharpener; we have one that visits the Red Stick Farmer’s Market every few weeks.

One can certainly survive in the kitchen with an inexpensive, stamped knife, but once you make the decision to step up to the big leagues then consider all your options carefully. A good knife is expensive but it is a lifetime investment, and if you are anything like me then you don’t want to go spilling your own blood with something you buy from an infomercial.

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