Thread: Kitchen Knives

Kitchen Arsenal



From bottom to top: Kiyoshi Kato, Yoshikane, Carter, Tojiro, Zensho.

Cheers,

Jack

From MrMagnus's post #14:

Attachment 159906

This might be one of the sexiest things I've ever seen.

My 3 favorite 240mm chef's knives. Richmond AS Laser, Tanaka Sekiso and Tanaka R2:

Everyone should have at least one good kitchen knife. I really only use my 240mm Konosuke Gyuto (stainless as I don't trust my significant other to dry after use....). Prior to that knife I'm not sure how I got by. I still have my cheapo petty knifes made from crap steel that take ages to "sharpen".

The konosuke though takes a very nice edge. I only take it to around 6-8K though using a tomo progression on my okudo suita. Think I use this knife for 90% of my cooking.

Want to slowly expand and get some carbon steel ones to compare and also watch the patina develop, but they will have to relegated to strictly my use. Not sure how many times I've seen the konosuke sitting on the cutting board covered in lime juice....

Yepp Konosuke is awsome. Love my 270 hd2 custom western

Masahi Kobo 150mm Petty, Nickel Damascus with SLD cutting core.

A few Deba's and a couple paring knives. The Deba's are 1095 and have promise of hamon, the paring knives are O-1. One of the Deba's and paring knives are for my sister for her birthday...she's been bugging me for something I have made on the anvil for quite some time. I'll post a pic once they are done. Boy was it good to get back on the grinder, anvil, and forge!

Remember gents - using a steel in the kitchen is akin to a strop in the den. You can keep a well sharpened knife in working order for a long time with one.

As for bacteria on wood boards...

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Problem with end grain brds is they also suck up and retain fluids that harbors bacteria.
Best cutting brd I have ever Had was a 24 inch end grain japanese round doug fir brd, 4 in. thick
always had mold on it.

WTH?? I don't really know what a end grain board is but... If its growing mold, I can't help but think you have got a bit of a sanitation problem going on. I mean I am assuming its a hardwood no?

Originally Posted by Birnando

I can see the concern.
But as Stefan says, properly cared for the wooden boards are no health hazard to anyone.

Keeping a clean board, and indeed the whole kitchen is essential to me.
Wooden boards or not

Back when I was in college studying to be a meat cutter/inspector, they were replacing all the boards back to wood from the resins they had replaced the wood with. They thought the plastic would be more sanitary.

It turned out that wood naturally combats bacteria where the plastic didn't. Hence, if you didn't clean the plastic really well and let it dry properly, you had a problem.

That said, after a days work, we would always throw a bleach solution onto the wood boards and scrape off the top layer of the board with a scraper.

Seriously - if your board is growing bacteria... find some bleach. Better yet, throw it out and use a different wood lol.

Be carefull with steeling though.

If not done properly you'll actually ruin the knife.
Knife Steeling And Stropping What They Really Do


In my opinion almost everyone would be better off just keeping a large very fine hone in the kitchen. I keep my Yellow belgian coticule in the kitchen and I give the knife a few swipes every week or so.

It would also depend on the kitchen knife we're talking about. But my blue paper steel japanese kitchen knife at rockwell 63 will never see a butcher steel in it's life.

Whenever I think of laying a lot of cash out for kitchen knives, I think of the custom butchers I see with cheap looking plain knives that they use.
They are cutting every day, and if high cost knives would make their day easier, I would think they would have them.
Just lie asking contractors about tools. They can tell you what will take a pounding and keep getting the job done.