How the HELL do I choose a chef's knife goddamit

Is this more Veeky Forums or /diy/-related?

Broke handle of old kitchen knife given by aunt 10 years ago, need to buy new for the first time, this is all I ever used and I can't find something similar.

Started watching videos and this is fucking IMPOSSIBLE - how do I do this? I don't want to buy a cheap useless POS but I also don't want to waste lots of money on something that doesn't fit my needs. There's such a huge variety of steels, handles, blades, cutting styles and prices, and to research this from scratch would take me a millennia and I need to DICE SHIT.

The one I had was weird, it was shaped like a cleaver but smaller and thinner, and I sharpened it to cut tomatoes as well as hard vegetables, used mostly in pushing-forward motion and the rocking motion was mostly up-down, like a paper cutter. What sort of knife would you recommend?

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Any of the knives in your pic. Whatever feels right in your hand.

>Misono UX10

u rich bro?

But that's misleading, right? That can't be the only factor in the decision to spends possibly hundreds of dollars on a piece of metal. That's like telling someone to buy the car with the most comfortable seat. Things like how soft the steel is determine how you treat the blade to make it sharp again; things like the shape of the blade determine how you slice things and what it's best for; if you gave someone who's used to German knives a Japanese one and let them treat it the same way and they didn't take care of it they'd ruin the knife in a year.

Go to the a cooking supply store, ask to try some of the knives. The knife that feels best you either buy right then or go online and search for the same one for less money.
Or if you have an Ikea where you live they have good starter knives that are inexpensive.

The key when buying a knife is that it needs a good weight to it and it has to have multible purposes for you. go with a thicker knife if you are going to be chopping thicker things like carrots or some hardier melons, you also want a knife that has a nice sharp tip for getting the veins and sinew off of meats. Finally you want something that will last you along time so go with either stainless if you dont want to worry about rust, or carbon steel which is greaet becouse they are usually thicker and can last a lifetime if they are taken care of.

My personal knife is similar to the 4th knife in the pick but has a nice heavy wooden handle with a flat bit at the end.

First of all, none of those knives cost "hundreds of dollars". Second, OP clearly doesn't know how to take care of a knife to begin with, so would have to learn with whatever he decided on.

How do you take care of a knife? I just cut with mine.

>Go to the a cooking supply store
Go to Macys, Williams-Sonoma, etc, anywhere they will let you handle the knives and decide if you like an 8in or 10in chefs, and yes, that curved edge will allow you to rock and do some nice things right. Whether you want a traditional handle or one that balloons out and fits your palm fully will be up to you. A quality knife has a full tang (metal from tip to tip right through the handle) and will be something you can balance on one finger right at the hilt of the blade (equal weight forward and backwards).
One you pick your chef's knife, realize a lot of people now find the Santoku blade a good style for daily knife and use it as preference over the chef's knife for lots of tasks. You might want one I would get one with those little bubbles in the metal you see in the 3rd from the left in your picture. That helps things like cheese or cucumber slices from sticking to a flat blade. It'll be bad enough the edge if flat, but removing a slice from the blade after every stroke might be annoying for you. Think of food clinging by water seal, and then rolling off your board onto the floor or countertop.
Finally, for crusty bread, and rinded or skinned fruit, the serrated knife is going to be a good thing to have.

Think about the things you do often...if it's slicing acorn squash, cantaloupe, watermelon, then you need a knife for that. If it's slicing roasts, or filleting the fish on your boat each week, or cutting open an avocado from your tree....this is why people have their own favorite knives. It's related to their lifestyles. inb4 a bunch of shit about my suggestions. Do what you want, of course.

I think after holding some high ticket items, you can then look for a sale (macys again, famous for that), look for the 2nd tier version from that brand like at Marshalls in the blister pack sets, or look at highly rated "cheap" knives, like IKEA *gasp* in a big knife block, or a brand I like Komachi costco.

>Go to the a cooking supply store, ask to try some of the knives. The knife that feels best you either buy right then or go online and search for the same one for less money.

This is your answer OP. Just go to a fucking store!

Well said!
My very first knife was one with a shitty plastic handle like the red one in your pic.......I love that shitty knife i still use it for when I go camping lol

>OP clearly doesn't know how to take care of a knife to begin with
OP here. I've had my last knife kept in tact for a decade, sharp enough to slice a ripe tomato or through paper. The wood handle was rubbish to begin with and not sealed tight, so over the years water got into the cracks and ate away at the rivets so the handle started to wobble and was unsafe to use.

Also I just searched for "chef knives", I have no idea what any of those are.

>10049612
Firstly, thanks for the advice!
I'm vegetarian so knives designed for slicing meat or fish or cleavers meant to cut through chicken or bone would not be useful to me. My main usage is hard/soft vegetables, fruits with hard skin (watermellon etc.), dicing onion/garlic, chopping herbs etc.. Like I said here , I do know how to care for a knife and sharpen/hone it and I have the tools necessary, I just don't want to pick up something that feels nice in my hand but doesn't fit my normal use.

Like I said, I mostly cut forward and "regular" chef knives feel awkward to use. I like longer, more robust handles since I have larger hands, and I prefer blades that have weight and aren't very thin. If this affects the knife I should but in any way, I have no way of telling. Also I hate ceramic knives, they're the Gillette Mach-5 blades of the knife world.

do most stores that sell knives allow customers to handle them and feel them? What about returning them to the store if they don't like it? Can you return one after you've sharpened it? I'm willing to spend some money (not a poor student anymore) but I'd rather buy something good that will last me a while.

go to a store
find the kinda knives that looked similar as your old one
try them on your hand to figure which feels the best for you

I can't find one. It was weird looking.

>How do you take care of a knife
- keep it sharp
- keep it dry
- keep it clean
- keep it around
if you can't use it for self-defense at a moment's notice your knife is useless.

I'm starting to think you have some weird phobias or general anxiety. You got good advice now. It's enough. Buy the 3 types of knives suggested or the set suggested in and be done with it. Go. To. Mall. Talk to service personnel at Macys.
They are total foodies in the kitchenwares dept. You want quality and you want a deal. Done. Stop thinking that you need to spend money only once in your life for each thing. Your moods and tastes will evolve over time, as will your needs, and when and if you are ready for a handmade japanese work of beauty, or the best thing out of Germany, you will buy it too, and either keep your old knives in rotation or donate them to goodwill so starving college kids can benefit from them or old onto them til your kids go to college one day and break the handles.

Return the knives? WTF? No you wouldn't return them after sharpening them. You wouldn't even sharpen them if you weren't sure you wanted to keep them. Talk about committment issues. It's not all the money in the world. They're like the same price as a pair of jeans or a good meal out in town. Win some, lose some, learn from the experience, move on from there. Eventually you decide, you are brand loyal to x brand, such as Levi's or Henckels. It will happen.

Do you have a pic maybe?
Or maybe you can find some online store with massive selection, find similar models and that way have better luck finding the type in real life

Jezus christ

>Broke handle of old kitchen knife given by aunt 10 years ago, need to buy new for the first time, this is all I ever used and I can't find something similar.

You're a fucking faggot OP and you're ruining this board. You never went to a store, you didn't put any effort into search for a knife and you don't know shit about knives in general.

>it was shaped like a cleaver but smaller and thinner, and I sharpened it to cut tomatoes as well as hard vegetables, used mostly in pushing-forward motion

You mean like a cai dao? A chinese vegetable cleaver? If you like to push cut then you should keep using that.

amazon.com/dp/B003HESNR8/ref=psdc_14309831_t1_B0768H6PS9

>How do I choose a knife

This board needs a sticky for this kind of shit, but I digress.

Start by listing the features you want. You can select a metal by hardness, ability to hold an edge, and required maintenance (e.g. some carbon blades need to be oiled or some such nonsense).

Then, identify the design you want. Do you need a cutting edge that goes from the tip all the way to the end of the blade? Or is the bolster on that Wusthof acceptable? How much curve do you want? Based on your post, it sounds like you don't do a lot of rock-chopping, so maybe less curve is better.

Finally, sort by size & price. Just go on any website and look for a knife that has all the features you want and is within your budget. If they have a good return policy, don't be afraid to use it for a week and then send it back if you don't like it. That's it. That's how you choose a knife.

Bonus: don't forget to get a honing steel & whetstones.

It's pic related (it's not as large or as heavy as a cleaver), I used actual cleavers before and they're very different to use. Call me an idiot for not knowing what it's called and using the knife I was given for free but I never needed to replace it, only sharpen / hone it.

Thanks, I know what features I want in a knife but I don't know which knife can satisfy them. I'll go to a store and pester the salesperson, I have a basic whetstone and steel already.

You will never have to sharpen a Komachi.

I find it hard to believe anyone would enjoy using pic for all their cutting needs.

Time to grow up and get more than one knife now, or more than one "forward" technique, whatever the crap that is. No, you didn't invent the wheel. What you are doing isn't what everyone else is doing, because there's no merit to it. Grow up and join the world of cutlery and get whatever the mainstream figured out is good.

>Time to grow up
I'm still amused by how every board has the same form of patronizing elitism and zeal about its subject matter, that must be expressed in the same belittling tone, even when discussing shit like screw heads on /diy/ or cutlery on Veeky Forums. What the hell do you get from patronizing someone asking for advice who clearly states they're not even a hobbyist?

>I find it hard to believe
Your belief is not necessary, you have my word. I enjoyed using this knife for most purposes.
>Time to grow up X 2
I'm likely a decade older than you and was legally allowed to vote for longer than you've been alive. Of course I'll get "more than one knife now", that's exactly what I said in OP.
>more than one "forward" technique, whatever the crap that is
It's not a technique, it's just one of the ways used to describe the direction your hand holding the knife takes when you slice food - certain knives are more comfortable to use depending on whether you're pulling backwards or forwards. I never used the term in any professional sense, I'm not a chef I'm a fucking programmer, don't read too much into this.
>What you are doing isn't what everyone else is doing, because there's no merit to it
W-what AM I doing exactly, that you think I attribute to everyone, and that has NO merit whatsoever? Buying a new knife? Asking for advice?
>the world of cutlery
What a pompous shithead. I'm just buying a kitchen knife not entering some elite social group.