Maybe some of you old hands can address this issue better than I. Whenever I read knife advice in a cookbook or magazine, I always hear even quite good people say: "you only need three knives: a chef's knife, a paring knife, and a serrated bread knife." I have all those of course, but my question is, why?
Sure, if you cut big loaves of crusty bread often you want a bread knife (they're inexpensive enough and there's no good reason to spend big on them). But I don't even get the value of small parer. I mean, doesn't everyone have a vegetable peeler? Do you really switch from a chef's knife to a paring knife to cut a shallot? I take apple cores out much more cleanly with an apple corer, etc., etc.
So I guess I'm back to what Anthony Bourdain says in Kitchen Confidential: get one good chef's knife and learn how to do everything with it.
Comments? (like I had to ask)
Sure, if you cut big loaves of crusty bread often you want a bread knife (they're inexpensive enough and there's no good reason to spend big on them). But I don't even get the value of small parer. I mean, doesn't everyone have a vegetable peeler? Do you really switch from a chef's knife to a paring knife to cut a shallot? I take apple cores out much more cleanly with an apple corer, etc., etc.
So I guess I'm back to what Anthony Bourdain says in Kitchen Confidential: get one good chef's knife and learn how to do everything with it.
Comments? (like I had to ask)