#Best Kitchen Knife Sets

Your Ultimate Guide To The Best Kitchen Knives

You can easily find yourself spending a small fortune on knives that you will never use.

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For all the fancy culinary gadgets that are available to you, the keen home cook, at Christmas, nothing and I mean nothing is as important as a good set of knives. Ask any of the dozens of chefs I come in contact with on a regular basis, and they will tell you exactly the same. They protect their knife rolls as if they were infant children and snarl at anyone who even looks as if they might touch the tools of their trade.

There are dozens of different brands available and dozens of different styles of knife suitable for every task in the kitchen. Pricing can range from as little as $30 for a chef s knife to the cost of a sizable meal for two for a knife set.

If you don t know exactly what you are looking for, you can easily find yourself spending a small fortune on knives that you will never use. Choose correctly, however, and your knives can become the most essential tools in your kitchen and last you a lifetime.

Buying the right knives can be a bewildering business, so here are a few tips to help you make the perfect choice.

1. You only really need 4 knives

If you believe all the infomercials and the babbling of presenters on the home shopping channels, it is impossible to produce good food at home unless you buy a block containing at least half a dozen different styles of knife and a few steak knives for good measure. But you really only need the following knives to take on just about any task in the kitchen.

-CHEF S KNIFE

A good chef s knife (usually around 8 inches long and 1 inches wide) is the single most important knife you will ever buy. It can be used for everything from slicing and chopping vegetables to cutting joints of meat.

-PARING KNIFE

A paring knife (usually around 4 inches long) is another essential, particularly if you have intricate or fiddly tasks, like peeling fruits and vegetables, sectioning citrus, or taking the veins out of shrimp.

This is a much wider knife (usually around 6 to 8 inches long and about 3 inches wide) and is particularly vital if you joint meat at home and do not want to dull or damage the edge of your expensive chef s knife. I use it all the time to joint poultry, saving money on buying pre-jointed pieces at the supermarket.