What kitchen knives should every kitchen have?

I am in the process of gradually upgrading my existing kitchen knives one at a time and want to know what kitchen knives would be best to add to my collection.
I have already have a quality 10" chef's knife, a 3" paring knife, a serrated bread knife and a 6" utility/slicing knife that I reach for all the time.
Any others I should add? What about the Asian Santoku knives? Do I need one? I have a sharpening steel. I have about 3 more slots in my knife block.
I'm not sure I'd use a boning knife much.
I would like to know what other knives good cooks find useful.

Welcome to KKF

You don't need a boning or santoku knife. You can do any job with the knives you have now. I do have a cheap Henckels serrated utility knife that I use to cut sandwiches. It's not a necessity but very convenient if you don't want to bring out the big ol bread knife. I also have a pair of kitchen shears that really come in handy for taking the backs out of chickens

I think the only knife pretty much every kitchen would benefit from is a paring or petty knife. Though most in this community are pretty obsessed with gyuto, I'm of the mind that for my cooking environment, smaller knives like santoku, 180mm gyuto, funayuki, &c. are most useful. I also have a bunch of nakiri, but those certainly aren't for everyone.

santokus are basically just knives that give you the blade height of a large chef's knive for knuckle clearance and scooping up stuff but with three inches missing at the tip if you don't actually need the length of said large chef's knife.

I have a sharpening steel.

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No stones? those and a good smooth polishing steel would at his point be more useful than another knife, IMHO.

yanzha said:

I have already have a quality 10" chef's knife, a 3" paring knife, a serrated bread knife and a 6" utility/slicing knife that I reach for all the time.
Any others I should add?

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That's already more than you need. There are all sorts of specialty knives you might find useful, like watermelon knives, pizza knives, long ham slicers, noodle knives, cleavers/splitters, fruit-carving knives, etc. But they're not every-kitchen knives.

yanzha said:

What about the Asian Santoku knives? Do I need one? I have a sharpening steel. I have about 3 more slots in my knife block.

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In principle, if you get a santoku, you don't need any other knives: it's an all-purpose knife (literally, three-purposes). But if you'd rather have individual knives for the three purposes, you can get a yanagiba, deba, and nakiri. Or get them and a santoku. And you don't need to stop there; a great thing about Japanese knives is that you get get 57 varieties without any duplicates. You'll need a bigger block.

(Or go Chinese. Then you only need 2 knives. A thin "cleaver", and a thick cleaver.)

Yanzah, your list is pretty complete. All you appear to be missing is quantities (i.e., 6 240 gyutos, 3 parers, 4 pettys, etc.).

Wildboar is spot on, a few more gyutos (I'd also add a cleaver to the mix just for fun).

an all-purpose Chinese cleaver, I've many gyutos & santokus; I still can't find a knife to replace it!

For food prep I use only 3 knives--chef's, paring and bread.

For butchery (game, pork, etc.), I use 2--butcher knife and boning knife

If you don't hunt or harvest your own animals, the aforementioned will do.

Some will recommend a slicer and petty/utility knife, but for normal food prep they are redundant and just extra tools to wash. If you worked at a station where you were cutting soft proteins for more than an hour a day, a slicer would be recommended. This is, of course, just my opinion and I know many here will disagree.

Every kitchen should have a Carter, a Marko, Rodrigue, Burke, Devin... Just buy everything showing up on buy sell trade for a month and you'll be fine

Actually from your list the only thing I'd miss is a sturdy honesuki

TimoNieminen said:

a great thing you get get 57 varieties without any duplicates. You'll need a bigger block.

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I definitely read this wrong and misunderstood on the first pass.

My fault for writing it wrong.

I see some cute specialised Japanese knife and it's "Oh, that's different! I wonder what it's like to use?" Not having infinite money and infinite kitchen space, I must resist the temptation. Remind myself that I don't actually need an eel skinning knife, or a crab scraping knife. Alas, it means my Japanese range is blandly conventional.

(A knife block or rack to hold 57 knives would be useful. It would give me empty spaces to fill with eel and crab knives.)

TimoNieminen said:

My fault for writing it wrong.

I see some cute specialised Japanese knife and it's "Oh, that's different! I wonder what it's like to use?" Not having infinite money and infinite kitchen space, I must resist the temptation. Remind myself that I don't actually need an eel skinning knife, or a crab scraping knife. Alas, it means my Japanese range is blandly conventional.

(A knife block or rack to hold 57 knives would be useful. It would give me empty spaces to fill with eel and crab knives.)

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Oh no worries about the typo. That's not what I misread. :lol2:

Tristan said:

Every kitchen should have a Carter, a Marko, Rodrigue, Burke, Devin... Just buy everything showing up on buy sell trade for a month and you'll be fine

Actually from your list the only thing I'd miss is a sturdy honesuki

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Wise words indeed!

I would also add Shigefusa, Kato, Itinomonn, Martell, Ealy, Misono, Hiromoto, Takeda, Sakai Yusuke, and just a few more.

Once you have acquired at least a petty and a Gyuto from each maker, sell them all and start again. Rinse and repeat

Welcome and good luck :thumbsup:

Cheers,

J

A Nakiri, I find it to be very useful knife.

Despite lots-o-knives, I find that I use a 270mm gyuto and a pairing knife 99.9% of the time. When I cook outside my house these are the only knifes I take.

Let's first discuss what you consider a good knife. What exactly do you currently have?

At home, I like the idea of 1 paring or petty and 1 gyuto/chukabocho. Then depending on the food you cook, a bread knife or deba or yanagiba/slicer or heavier cleaver are optional. If in a restaurant, thinking of speed and space I think a 180 or 210 petty/suji is so useful to have right there.

cclin said:

an all-purpose Chinese cleaver, I've many gyutos & santokus; I still can't find a knife to replace it!

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Sorry to interject, but cclin - which cleaver do you have?