Buying Kitchen 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. All right, so now you're going to ask me, "Okay, Brandon. You've done everything. You've shown us everything. What are your knives that you cannot live without." Well, obviously I'd like to have all these knives around if I was on a desert island and was able to use them all. However, let's assume that I can't have them all. If had to run that down to four pieces. These are the four I'd go with. I'd go with my paring knife. I'd go with my utility knife - which, in this case, is a serrated utility. I'd go with my center view chef's knife - just a matter of preference for the blade angle and blade edge. And I'd go with the honing steel. Now, you're probably wondering why I don't have something like a boning utility knife like this in the stack. Reason being is because, between this knife and this knife, I can kind of make up for that difference. I've got the nice small tip on this one, nice fine tip and fine edge for detail work. At the same time, I've got the muscle of this one with the nice longer blade. I keep this one around for slicing bread, fruit, and/or vegetables. So, between all of these, there's not much I can't do. Now, honestly, if we had to take the one out that was disposable, it'd be this one. You?re going, "Well, Brandon, that leaves you two knives." It's all I need. And if you were to say, "Okay, you can only have, you know, one knife. Which knife would it be?" No question. It's going to be the chef's knife. Once you get good enough with a chef's knife, there's nothing you can't do. You can cut chicken with this. You can cut vegetables. You can cut fruit. You can peel stuff with it. You can hold it like this and do really delicate detail work. There's not much you can't do with a good chef's knife, once you find one that's comfortable in your hand. So, if I had to sum it up, here's my, here's my minimum set-up: chef's knife, paring knife and honing steel. You know, next thing I would add, like I said, is a utility knife, and go from there. Knife collections aren't about how many pieces you've got. You should really just get the pieces you know you're going to use. I've got three or four fish knives; I never use them because I use this instead. I've got two different bread knives. I rarely use those, because I use this instead. I've got a million different - not a million - but realistically I think I've got six or eight different specialty paring knives. I come back to this one every single time. So, it's all about finding what works for you. These are my personal favorite three. I'd recommend you start off with paring knife, chef's knife, and honing steel and work up from there. Other than that, thanks a lot for watching my video and have a wonderful time shopping for knives."