Choosing Utility Knives & Boning Knives

Video Transcript

"My name is Brandon Sarkis, on behalf of Expert Village. Today, I'd like to speak with you about what to look for when buying kitchen knives. Let's take a second to look over our different blade types for the utility, and boning portion of our knives. What you're going to see here; this is going to be just a standard. This could almost work as a slicer; a carver. It's going to have a serrated tip; straight edge. This is kind of your starting point. This is a very good; very sharp knife. It's a nice Japanese stainless knife, but in all honesty; it's got kind of a chintzy handle on it; not what you're looking for, but it's a good blade shape; to start. More of your traditional European style; it's going to be long and slender. This is your standard six inch utility knife. This is something you see a lot of people go for. Personally; I'm not a fan of the utility knife. I keep one around just to have it, but once you get good enough with a knife; a chef's knife, and a paring knife should meet in the middle and take care of everything you need to take care of. This is a nice; narrow, and you can see; a very thin blade; very narrow at the tang; a six inch utility knife. Here's our Japanese style single-sided blade, and what that means is that on this side of the blade it's completely flat, and this side has the bevel; or cutting edge. The advantage to these; you can see the blade has a unique shape to it; you can get them really, really, really sharp, and they're very, very precision orientated. The downside; though, is that you can't really sharpen these very well by yourself, so you have to get them professionally sharpened, and also for that reason; the care and maintenance of them is a little difficult. If you're just looking for ultimate sharpness this is a great choice. You really can't go wrong with one of these. This is kind of an all-purpose; this is what you would call a Honesuki, or a Japanese boning knife. Same similar shape almost to this in the actual shape of the blade angle, and blade design. The difference being; this is actually a double-sided blade, so there's a blade on both sides. It will get nice and sharp; you can also sharpen it by yourself. This one's one of my favorites. This is my go to utility knife right now. This is my up and coming go to utility knife. This is a kind of weird anomaly in utility knives. You see it's got a large, flat area on the blade right here, and also, it's got a weird, scalloped, single-sided; so it's only sharp on this side, and this side is flat, but it's got a scalloped; single-sided serration. This is great for...this wouldn't replace this knife, but this is great for slicing something really thin; like tomatoes or something, and then you want to scoop them up. There you go; that's the point of this knife. Lastly here; the traditional boning or filet knife. The advantage to this knife; quite simply; is that it's flexible. You can actually take it, and bend it just like that. If you need a flexible blade this is the one to get."