petty vs specialized knives (deba, honesuki etc)

[Carl Kotte]

As best as I know, "tristinction" is not a word. But it does work, congratulations!

Haha, thanks! You are right, I guess, but - and this is anecdotal evidence - I have seen that word in print somewhere. Would ’threefold distinction’ be better? Or am I simply missing some obvious idiomatic expression for slicing a matter into three?

 

[rickg17]

To lump serrated knives together with serving knives seems wrong. Hey, you can use some bread knives for slicing and dicing. You can even handle whole fish with a bread knife with OK results (as always it depends on who holds the knife). I wouldn’t, but that is another story. Serrated knives can easily be used in prep.

I suppose, but people always call the serrated knife in these discussions a bread knife, indicating use as well as style and for me a serrated knife used to slice bread isn't really part of prep, but of serving. It's an artificial distinction in many ways (is a paring knife used to slice strawberries for a dish prep or serving), but that's how I think of it.

 

[Carl Kotte]

I suppose, but people always call the serrated knife in these discussions a bread knife, indicating use as well as style and for me a serrated knife used to slice bread isn't really part of prep, but of serving. It's an artificial distinction in many ways (is a paring knife used to slice strawberries for a dish prep or serving), but that's how I think of it.

Fair enough! I was unaware of that terminological point. Thanks for the info.

 

[Geigs]

My needs as a home cook are really pretty basic- I use a petty for prep of small vegetables and fruit. I use a Takeda 270 for slicing most proteins and larger vegetables/fruit. And a cheap Boning Knife for breaking down chickens and deboning legs of lamb. I have a cleaver, santokus, bread knife, a heavy deba (almost no use, I use it to crush garlic as I prefer to fillet fish with a thinner knife and my fish are never big enough to need a deba). I have 4 gyutos from 210-270 that are really surplus to requirements, but I Need a couple more to play with different steels....