Need kitchen knife recommendations!

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emmawilson

Member
I come to the experts for advice...my husband wants a new set of kitchen knives for our cabin and gave me the green light to pick them out. We've got a set of Global knives at home that he picked, but I don't love the all one-piece construction, and I'm not sure I want another convex ground set. So, looking for a small set in the kinda middle $200-300 price range, ideally with at least a paring knife, a small chef's knife, and a large chef's knife.

Any suggestions?

In a perfect world, I'd buy the Spyderco Murray Carter Superblue knives and call it a day, but they're more than hubby wants to spend. So I've been looking at Shun, Boker, and Henckels, but I have no idea which brands to trust. I'm also not as familiar with the common kitchen knife steels like X50CrMoV15, VG-Max, and MBS-26. How do they compare with BD1N, VG-10, and Superblue on the Spyderco kitchen knives?
 
emmawilson said:
I come to the experts for advice...my husband wants a new set of kitchen knives for our cabin and gave me the green light to pick them out. We've got a set of Global knives at home that he picked, but I don't love the all one-piece construction, and I'm not sure I want another convex ground set. So, looking for a small set in the kinda middle $200-300 price range, ideally with at least a paring knife, a small chef's knife, and a large chef's knife.

Any suggestions?

In a perfect world, I'd buy the Spyderco Murray Carter Superblue knives and call it a day, but they're more than hubby wants to spend. So I've been looking at Shun, Boker, and Henckels, but I have no idea which brands to trust. I'm also not as familiar with the common kitchen knife steels like X50CrMoV15, VG-Max, and MBS-26. How do they compare with paudin knife review BD1N, VG-10, and Superblue on the Spyderco kitchen knives?
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Thanks for any help or advice!
 
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My kitchen knives are German made Henckels. I really like that. Served me well, and I haven't had to sharpen any of them in the 4 years we've owned them (I have used the honing rod, though).

Honestly, I suggest you just go off of ratings. Good, high quality knives are going to perform as such. If they don't, they get a poor rating. We've been using Henckels knives for a few decades and that's why we opted to buy the last set (the set before that got messed up in moving). I forgot how much our set cost, but It was a full block of German made Henckels knives. I'm sure you can find a nice set of knives for $300. I honestly wouldn't worry too much about the exact alloy of a knife. From the perspective of an end user, edge retention really aught to be the only thing that matters. And again, you're going to figure out more from reviews that you will from what alloy a knife is. I could be using the best steel in the world and if I don't do a proper heat treat, I may end up with a soft edge. Sure it'll sharpen up nicely, but it won't retain the edge.

Of course, buying the knives as a package deal will save you money. You're going to get a lot "fancier" of a knife for $300 if you're only buying knives for the kitchen. Not a whole set with steak knives and what-not.
 
jmforge said:
Misono? And you don't need a "set."
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this. Abandon any notions of a “set” and you will end up with a far better collection based on how / what you actually prepare. If you want all of the handles to match then it makes sense to buy one brand, but that’s the only reason to buy one brand. Still, your money will go farther buying the knives individually because you won’t be buying knives that you don’t use and you can put that money into better versions of the ones you use most, like the chef knife and the paring knife.

Any of the brands you mentioned are good knives. Basically, you have a primary decision to make - bolsters or no bolsters. That will solve half of your problem in deciding right up front because it will eliminate half of the options.

Henckels, Shun, Wusthoff, Global, MAC… all good knives. But there is a world of great knives out there that you won’t see in stores. Misono, Kanetsugu, Fujiwara, Tojiro are fantastic. Check out “chef knives to go” dot com.
 
I listen to a pod cast of a professional chief and I had the chance to ask him about the knives he uses and what he prefers. He said BOTH at home and in his restaurants he only uses FOUR knives. A paring knife, a small chief knife, a boning knife and a bread knife. You give him those FOUR knives SHARP and he can deliver a gourmet meal to anyone. Now he did say he had multiple knives so he didn't have to wash between uses but they ALL was those four basic knives.

You might want to consider 4 great knives rather than 40 sub par knifes.
 
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Coop said:
I listen to a pod cast of a professional chief and I had the chance to ask him about the knives he uses and what he prefers. He said BOTH at home and in his restaurants he only uses FOUR knives. A paring knife, a small chief knife, a boning knife and a bread knife. You give him those FOUR knives SHARP and he can deliver a gourmet meal to anyone. Now he did say he had multiple knives so he didn't have to wash between uses but they ALL was those four basic knives.

You might want to consider 4 great knives rather than 40 sub par knifes.
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Out of my set I use 2 chefs knives, a paring knife, and a bread knife regularly.

Sent from my Champion Forge using Tapatalk
 
Same. 8 inch chef, 6 inch chef, 4 inch petty / paring knife, long slicer, fillet knife, and a long serrated el-cheapo beater knife for bread and pineapples. I have knives galore and those are the ones that get used. (The long slicer cuts watermelons that are too long for my fillet knife and gets used at Thanksgiving and Christmas for big roasts.)
 
John Wilson said:
Those are great looking knives. Very similar to the Shun Elite series.

For production knives, I have been very happy with VG10 steel.
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The story is that VG10 is a bit finicky and the quality can vary from maker to maker. I had a Hattori "forum" suji for a while in VG and it was very nice. i was told they do a good job with the HT, etc,, but others perhaps not quite as good.
 
that may be. I have had a number of knives in VG10 and they do all sharpen a bit differently, but once sharpened I don’t see any blatant differences in how well they hold that edge. The Tojiro VG10 honestly reminds me of AEBL in that it forms a persistent burr that can take a good deal of patience to finally get rid of. The Shun knives that I have are VG10 and aren’t nearly as difficult to sharpen.
 
To answer another post I saw above, AEB-L can have a hard to remove burr when it's left softer. At/above 60-61 rockwell, the burr is no where as bad as most run of the mill VG-10 and the steel itself doesn't feel as micro chippy either. Heat treat makes the difference in VG-10, AEB-L and all of the other steels out there!
 
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