Knife Thread

Which would you buy?

Dexter Russell Basics 8 Inch Chef Knife - $23

Or

Mercer Millennia 8 inch Chef Knife - $17

Inb4 the victorinox meme

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/Rx1U-bja3i8
knife-gallery.com/?pid=89136853
camelcamelcamel.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Clamshell-Packaging/product/B000638D32
procook.co.uk/product/procook-professional-x50-santoku-knife-18cm-7inch-promo
amazon.com/gp/product/B001DT1X9O/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2SS1FVT35UT8T
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Itinomonn gyuto if you prefer not to waste your money.

Fucking Christ, weebshit already?

Yes.

They make the best knives.

Not some sheet-stamped shit.

I clearly don't want or need the best knife, you goddamn shitbird. I'm looking at $20 knives, not $200. Your autism is out of control

Yes.

I have the one in OP, I'm completely an amateur but it has served me well and is still sharp after a few months of regular use and only basic maintenance. Would recommend

ruined the moment you use them for anything but slicing warm fish, they chip so easily compared to the near elastic european steel

Maybe if you learned how to use a knife and not rock chop like some ulu-caveman, then you would have something more intelligent to say.

how could I possibly rock chop with a brittle and straight blade?
have you never had to use a knife in a rough commercial kitchen?

I use the MAC Professional chef and paring knife for almost everything. I really like the paring knife, it's kinda my go to even though there are situations when I should definitely use the chef knife. You have to keep the edge up on the MACs, but I grind all my knives to the same double edge specs as the MAC knives, even shitty thrift store ones. They all cut just as well as the MAC chef knife, but the fit and finish is a little better on the MAC.

Victorinox Fibrox 8 inch is the best bang for your buck chef's knife.

Except it's now the same price as a Mercer Forged because of America's Test Kitchen

What kind of knife is that top one and what is it used for?

Seriously? It is a bread knife, a.k.a a bread saw. A staple in every German household, impossible to cut a crusty thick loaf of German bread without one.

Whatever brand you buy, invest an extra 25$ or so and have it thinned by a professional knifemaker with a belt grinder. I know it sounds retarded to spend 25$ on thinning a 20$ knife, but once you have tried it you will never go back. And no, buying a 45$ knife right away will not get you the same result. I have recently sent away six knives from my collection for thinning and I consider it more than wort the money. The work will be done by Jürgen Schanz, too - one of the best knifemakers in the world.

I have used a knife in a commercial kitchen.

I was saying that you shouldn't rock-chop period. It's a shite technique.

why? and what technique should people be using?

youtu.be/Rx1U-bja3i8

Why is he making a cooking video in a server room

That's his industrial kitchen ventilator fan in the kitchen of his restaurant.

how is the mercer forged

that looks stamped as fuck

The millennia is not forged

>not uising a full tang knife
>CURRENT YEAR

I fell for the Victorinox meme too, but for fucks sake user get a proper knife

fucking this

It was $27 when I first got mine from bed, bath, and beyond a few years ago. Mine got ruined by family over the holidays, so I be-bopped on down to bed, bath, and beyond to pick up a new one. Fuckers are charging $45 for the exact same knife nowadays.

Luckily, I was able to find a pretty decent Wusthof at TJ Maxx a few doors down for $20.

Check places like TJ Maxx, Ross Dress for Less, Marshall's, and HomeGoods. You can often find some fairly nice knives for right around your price range.

I've got a few deals on some nice cutting boards and a pretty nice digital thermometer probe alarm thing. Only $5! My turkey came out pretty well this year and I attribute that to the probe stuck in the inner thigh.

i had a wustoff classic that has seen heavy heavy prep use so I basically beat the shit out of it. I've been using the plastic handles for the past 4 years because fuck lugging around my knife roll on the subway.

Just wasted $250 on a new knife because I had christmas gift cards that I wouldn't have used otherwise. The kicker is I didn't even go to the store and try it out I just bought it online and its probably going to be terrible.

In the market for a new knife, looking at this one right now knife-gallery.com/?pid=89136853
I'd be able to get it for about 110€
Is that a good price? Any other recommendations?

The cheaper one. It's not going to be too much of a difference.
>Victorinox meme
It was only marginally the best, but then the meme drove the price way up.

Neither. Get a Chicago Cutlery chef's knife for $15. Full tang. Good shit.

This advice only applies to most European style kitchen knives. Japanese kitchen knives tend to be made significantly thinner than most European style knives, and will start roughly as thin as the thinned out Euro knives.

>full tang

Why? Do you baton much wood in your kitchen? A full tang serves literally zero functional purpose whatsoever in a knife that's going to be used for food prep.

Maybe it might be useful in a heavy butcher's cleaver meant to chop through bone, but otherwise it's a total normie dollar extraction meme.

>Stamped vs forged

In a lot of ways the kitchen cutlery industry is totally archaic at this point. The days when stamped vs forged had any inherent meaning are long over, as it's possible to get high quality sheet steel stock in most steels today.

Really it's the quality of the steel, the quality of the heat treatment, and the blade geometry that matter and not stamped (or stock removal methods in general) vs forged.

However kitchen knife manufacturers like it the way it is now because it lets them avoid disclosing what precise steel they are using and how it's heat treated, they can just say "it's forged" and rely on marketing to sell them.

Is there a big difference between X30Cr13 and X50CrMoV15? In real life home cooking

This. EVERY knife form a mass manufacturer is stamped nowadays. The bolster is formed by induction heating a part of the stamped out blade, then squishing the glowing part together until it thickens. Drop forged is not a quality mark anymory anyway nowadays.

No. Quality of heat treatment and QC is going to matter a lot more.

>tastes like bitch nigga titties

How'd I do

Looking for a higher end knife, however, while i know knives and steels, i know them from a tactical and survival (well camping) perspective, not cooking. What are sone higher quality brands, and what size knife is best for general use? Pricepoint is 150ish max, tho i can stretch a little if needed. Sick of my S.O. ruinining cheap knives by dishwashing them and by cutting improperly

How do I even use a knife? I can only find food related jobs around here so it'd be nice to be a cut above.

>

Kill your SO. Problem solved

Well, current knives suck anyhow, just cuisinart shit i got second hand

Get a Miyabi utility knife and learn how to take care of it. About $60 on Amazon and has high quality steel.

If you want to fuck around with kitchen knives get a Kiwi from a local asian market...cheap as fuck but if you screw up the maintenance on it it's not like a money pit; they're like $12 tops and a good learning knife.

When you're ready buy a honing steel and a wet stone, and we'll talk about that later.

I got a Wusthof Classic knife set from my mom for Christmas. Best knives I've owned, probably.

>8 inch

Must be jealous

Shell out just a little more money and buy a Mundial. Have their 10"and love it.

>victorinox meme
kill you are self

In other words, you fell for it

I've snapped cheap knives trying to cut the backbone out of chickens before.

I own several and they're great knives.

I have more expensive wusthof and henckels chefs knife, but prefer the Victorinox

ydiw m8
ww

Why is it a gift from my parents on our wedding many years ago works great as long as I keep it sharp? You knife guys are overdone autists in my opinion.

yeah, looks like the price shot up in 2013
camelcamelcamel.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Clamshell-Packaging/product/B000638D32

Beat me to it. Mundial is the best of the cheap beater knives.

Uh, how the fuck?

I knowhow to care for knives and sharpen them, most of them i maintain at 20-25° (depends on the knife and steel)
I know knives, not chefs knives is all.
Pic related, last production Doug Ritter Griptillian in M390
My edc knife is a $180 benchmade 940-2

Im just unsure of what chefs knives are memes and what ones arent. Currently looking at a Shun Classic in vg-10
From what i can tell, its steel is better than the Wusthof Ikon classic, if you know how to work with a stone.
Am i correct in this assumption?

what did you buy?

i like dexter knives. they're cheap and easy to worth with. i'm p good with them too. it's what i use at work.

better depends on the application
generally Japanese steels will be harder, which means harder to sharpen and more likely to chip, but also take and hold a keener edge
there are people who swear by the heavier Wusthof blades, there are those who like the Shun for being not so hefty, better for fine work

Got this piece de la shit for free so I don't know what to make of it, thoughts?
procook.co.uk/product/procook-professional-x50-santoku-knife-18cm-7inch-promo

Look on youtube, "knife skills". Except the one episode of cooking with Jack, where he has a chef show her "knife skills", that one is terrible.

Epensive knives are much more delicate than cheap ones and will be fucked up much more easily.

That seems like a really nice knife. Expensive linen micarta handles, and the geometry (blade thickness) doesn't seem too bad either. A good candidate for a professional thinnning job.

General kitchen use, think one knife fits all. Id love to have a set of either but im looking at one or two knives to function in every role i could need.

Shun are a massive rip-off. The Tojiro-DP line is superior in every way and way cheaper. KAI, as usual, cares more about making good looking knives and minimizing their expenditure on heat treating and post-Ht quality control (see: Shun, Kershaw and ZT).

Gonna buy a more high end knife in a bit (interested in the replies to becuase i'm in the same situation minus the SO part) but i figured i'd get a stone in the meantime:

Is this one a decent combo of grits? amazon.com/gp/product/B001DT1X9O/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2SS1FVT35UT8T

Also soliciting recs for decent cutting boards.

>soliciting recs for decent cutting boards
www.theboardsmith.com

That one is very good, as is most snything made by king.
An intermediate stone around 4000 would be nice

it's just as easy to damage expensive knives. the edges get chipped and fucked up in no time. stick with cheap ones. from a utility perspective, some of the cheap ones are just as good. that's why chefs use them

Can someone red pill me on wooden cutting boards? I see acacia and teak boards are pretty popular, are they good?
Looking for something in the 50-100$ range

What grit(s) of whetstone would you use for German steel? I see a lot of shilling for the King 1000/6000, but I'm assuming that's for harder Japanese knives?

I have this Zwilling Bamboo endgrain cutting board at home. Pretty good, desu. Doesn't wear the knives horribly and seems tough enough. Haven't started warping yet. It's needed a few refills of oil as it came a bit dry, but that's to be expected.
Side grain oak and ash at work. They all crack after a while and the oak is rough on the knives.

wouldbuyagain/10

>bamboo endgrain
Wouldn't the surface be like 40% glue?

No.

I don't know if it's Zwillings, but I bought a bamboo cutting board that looks exatly like that pic, and it shows no knife marks whatsoever after 6 months of daily use. I did notice I have to sharpen my knife more often, but that's kind of a zen thing for me so I don't mind at all.

German steel isnt a steel type. I use the same stones for all my knives though. That 1k/6kis good for all knices that have some edge to begin with. On kitchen knives you should only have to sharpen it ince a month max if you want peak performance, unless it's a hard steel where a honing rod wont work.

All bamboo cutting boards are shit. Bamboo fibers are really hard and tough and contain a lot of minerals. Very hard on the edge. A really good endgrain cutting board made from maple or acacia will last you the rest of your life if you take care of it.

> index finger not on blade
discarded, further posts from you hidden

santoku (if you can deal with the shape) OR gyuto OR euro-style chef's knife in the 16-20 cm range AND a paring knife
everything else is gravy. you will probably want a bread saw at some point, but you can buy any old piece of shit for the purpose.
if you're into primal cuts, you will find that you need a fillet knife
if you're into sushi, you will find you need a longer gyuto for clean draw-cuts
for field-dressing work you will need something a bit longer than your griptilian
if you break down carcasses, you will need a big no-nonsense fuck-off butcher's knife to supplement your fillet knife when breaking into joints and such (go for inox steel, it's softer, infinitely less likely to chip on bone)
that's about it...

Bamboo is a grass, and is only utilized for cutting boards due to its extremely low cost. The fibers soak up massive amounts of glue in the construction process, though, which is much harder than wood and ruins the point of an end grain cutting board. You'd be much better served with a hardwood from a tree, like maple or cherry.

Any recs on a cheap sharpening steel? I wanna go as cheap as possible without getting a total piece of junk.

Thinking about getting a larger chef's knife. I've always just used shorter knives for everything and always missed not having the extra length. What's the longest knife recommended for a 12" x 18" cutting board? I'm thinking 9 inch, but it's hard to test this for myself.

Also, is the Wusthof Le Cordon Bleu line any good? I've played with my father's Wusthof Classic and it felt breddy gud. Is there any real difference except for the shape of the bolster/finger guard?

Bumping for answer to this.

I've got a Zwilling Twin Four Star II, 8" chef's knife.

It was a gift, and so far it's absolutely fantastic. Comfy as hell, ridiculously sharp and has held its edge for a couple of months now.

I'll have to see how it holds up over a year or so to really give it a good review, though.

get a smooth/microgrooved steel, I have found them to be much more effective for realigning the edge than a traditional groved steel. If you want an additional sharpening effectt (i.e. removing material from the edge) try a ceramic rod. Or the underside of a ceramic plate.

If you want a longer knife just get it, and if your cutting board is too small get a larger one too. Both will be used several times daily and can easily last you for the next 20 or 30 years if you are a homecook, it doesn't make a lot of sense to count every dollar for purchases like that. And yes, the Cordon Bleu series is pretty good. I was able to find one of the last 10'' knives made from that series, in mint condition, for my collection. I don't think they are better than the Classics though, just lighter.

I'm with you on getting something good to grow into, but I'm kind of looking for a guideline as to how much cutting board space is required for a given knife length. If I have to get a larger cutting board, how much larger?

A lot of times, I see chef's on TV or youtube videos who are using an entire wooden countertop for food prep with a long knife. It's hard to know how a 9" or even 10" knife will handle in actual practice, given a certain size work space. For what it's worth, all of my current knives are shorter than 6".

> ceramic rod

Or a diamond coated rod, won't shatter if you drop it.

a 9'' blade on a 12x18 shouldn't be any problem, I have just tried it out with an even smaller board. That said, I personally use a 14x20'' acacia endgrain board and it makes working sooo much easier.

I have a diamond coated rod myself that I bought out of curiosity for the beater knives in my collection, and I have to say I would rather sharpen even my cheapest knives on the curbstone outside my house than on that thing. It is horrible to use.

miyabi birchwood, its surprisingly pretty good

a lot lighter than I'm used to.

I like those birchwood handles, and that line rates better than shuns in most reviews. I have a couple miyabis but not a birchwood...have fun with it.

Just bought a Hattori FH 210mm gyuto. How did I do? Should I expect this thing to chip the first time I use it?

Mercer culinary genesis is probably the best price/performance

>Should I expect this thing to chip the first time I use it?
Do you intend to use it on a rock?

It's VG10 stainless steel, not gonna chip.
Even carbon steel knives won't chip easily if you're not a retard.

No, you shouldn't. Hattori is famous for kowing how to heat treat VG 10 better than any other manufacturer. Just keep it away from bones, to be on the safe side. Most harder knives chip when they are being "walked" across the board, i.e. pressing down on the tip with your left hand and rocking the handle with your right hand while moving it from side to side.

If you press too hard with your left hand, the edge will dig into the board and when you swivel the blade with your right hand the edge chips due to the twisting forces.

BTW this "walking" is done for mincing herbs. Just keep a beater German knife around for that, and for the bones. The round profile of a German knife is better suited for mincing herbs anyway.