Premium Knives Without the Price Tag: The Chef-Grade Tools I Use Daily

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What Makes a Good Kitchen Knife?

My mother once gave me a lesson about commerce. While shopping for school clothes for the upcoming year, she handed me a shirt she thought I’d like. I wasn’t keen on it, but I didn’t want to reject another one of her choices. So I hedged a bit and said, “It’s…okay. I mean…I like it.” As she’s always been able to do, my mom saw through my BS and said…

“Jonathan. If you don’t love it, then we shouldn’t buy it. Make your decisions that way, okay?”

The best kitchen knife is the one you love to use. There are lots of different styles and sizes of knives, but if you don’t love your kitchen knife, then chances are you’re not going to enjoy your cooking experience.

This week’s newsletter is about sharing the knives I’ve come to love. They aren’t the highest quality you can buy. They aren’t the prettiest tools you’ll see. What these knives are is essential to my cooking experience. They are dependable, easy to keep sharp, and a joy to use.

My Everyday Knife

The knife I reach for most is my 8-inch Vitorinox Chef Knife (second from the left). This is my all-purpose knife that can do a good to outstanding job of just about everything you need a knife to do in the kitchen. About the only thing this knife can’t do that well is cut bread, but everything from filleting fish to breaking down a butternut squash, this knife is one I can’t live without.

What makes a chef’s knife shine is its size, both in length and height. You would want a tall knife to hold up when cutting tough and/or large items like squashes or hard cheeses. The fact that a chef’s knife tapers towards the tip allows you to have finer control for items that require more finesse and precision, like filleting a fish.

I went with Vitorinox because of a review by America’s Test Kitchen. In this review, ATK tested various knives at various prices to determine which offered the best value. The winner, my knife, performed just as well as a knife that cost ten times as much in sharpness over time and handling. I love gear that does a great job but costs far less than fancier models.

I also like that for less than $50, a novice like me can enjoy a chef-grade tool. A substantial barrier to people pursuing new hobbies is too often the cost of entry. It’s hard to get better as a home cook if you don’t practice, but it’s also hard to learn if your tools are inferior. The difference between my current chef knife and my old chef knife (the second knife from the right in the featured photo of this newsletter) was night and day. It changed my cooking forever in the same way that sourcing a professional apron drastically elevated my cooking experience and confidence.

Now, I’m not above shelling out lots of money for a fancy knife. I plan to buy one from Middleton Made Knives out of South Carolina.

What’s important to me with buying a knife like this is that I feel worthy of the skill and craftpersonship that goes into making said knife. At earlier points in my life, I could have afforded a knife like this, but, as you can see from the video, Quitin is a professional who puts a lot of time, energy, and himself into his knives. After two decades of dedication to improving my craft of cooking, I feel like I am approaching being worthy of his work.

My First Knife Love

My first knife is the 6-inch Calphalon chef knife (third from the left). Like the 8-inch Calphalon chef knife (second from the right) I sometimes use, this knife isn’t all that great on balance. The metal is soft, it’s too thick to maneuver with finesse, it’s chipped from years of use, and it’s too small for my hand for everyday use. All that being said, I love this knife for its sentimental value and for how much more comfortable it is to break down whole chickens than my 8-inch Vitorinox.

I like the shorter blade for breaking down meat, especially around joints and bones. I could probably learn how to use my chef knife for these tasks, but having a dedicated meat knife is nice because I’m often breaking down chicken and processing veggies for the same meal. I don’t know that I’ll ever get rid of this knife. You could buy it from me, but perhaps one day I’ll give it a nice retirement.

We’re Boning For Sure

My 6-inch Vitorinox Semi-stiff Boning Knife (first on the left) is the whole animal processing chef knife. I was disappointed this past hunting season not to harvest a third deer to work on some butchering techniques I learned from the Beared Butchers, where they break down an entire deer with just this knife.

I’ve used this knife to break down pigs, deer, and many different types of fish. I switched from my chef’s knife to this boning knife for filleting fish because it could do a job well for an inexperienced cook like me.

This boning knife is my second most essential knife and one of my top five most important kitchen tools. Its ability to make finer finesse cuts without sacrificing strength (semi-stiff as opposed to stiff is better) makes this tool a must-have. Plus, it’s surgically sharp. I’ve cut myself several times with this knife and didn’t know it until after I saw blood.

The Knife I Didn’t Know I Needed

I wrote about this recently, but the 10-inch Vitorinox Slicer (third from the right) is a knife I find myself increasingly reaching for. I almost didn’t buy this knife because I was considering purchasing a deli slicer to handle my meat-slicing needs. I’m so glad I didn’t because this knife is a joy, even beyond slicing meats.

What makes a slicer special is its length and consistency (that’s what she said!), which is useful when you need even cuts along an often irregular surface. I used this knife to cut open boiled eggs to make deviled eggs, and it worked like a dream!

There’s no need to buy a deli slicer with this tool in your arsenal.

Knives You Don’t Need

You don’t need a bread knife (first on the right) unless you make homemade bread. If you make homemade bread, you must have this knife because none of the others can do an effective job. But don’t spend your money unless bread making is something you’ll commit to.

You don’t need a pairing knife, although having one is useful. I can’t remember the last time I reached for mine, but I’ve used one a lot, especially for delicate tasks. However, as my knife skills improved, I’ve found it less and less necessary to reach for my pairing knife. I used this small knife primarily for peeling fruit, which I eat far less now.

You don’t need serrated knives. Except for home-baked bread, if your existing knives can’t cut it, then it’s time to sharpen them. Save your money for improving the tools you use every day rather than buying a specialty tool you’ll only use occasionally.

You don’t need a knife block set of knives. These sets run the same game cable companies do when they package the most valuable and popular channels with a whole mess of unnecessary programming. With knives, you don’t have to buy three different chef knife lengths to get the one you want. Don’t waste your money. Buy the knives I recommend, and the other if you need those specific jobs, and forget the rest. You may need to, like I did, buy a different-sized knife to fit your particular hand and cooking style, but let necessity be your guide in that case.

The Wild Kitchen and Knives

The connection is evident in this case, so let me discuss cost.

Perhaps surprisingly, the most expensive knife I’m recommending is the slicer, at $60. My chef’s knife cost $45, and my boning knife was less than $30. So you can get your hands on a set of high-quality, lifetime kitchen tools for under $150, which is a value that’s difficult to overstate.

Speaking of value, if you found this article useful, please share it with someone. I sometimes hear from subscribers who have sent this newsletter to people they think will find it interesting, and I very much appreciate that.

Happy cooking!

Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan