Good Knives Are A Must In The Kitchen
A kitchen needs utensils, and there’s such a wide variety available it will boggle your mind. Just look in any kitchen store or in the aisles of kitchenware at other retail stores and you’ll see an amazing array of items used for Cooking. Task specific utensils may not be used very often since they only have one function. However, there are other utensils that are more versatile, and needed and used daily.
Knives Are The Workhorse Of The Kitchen
If you do much Cooking at all, you’ll use not one, but several kinds of knives. Each of these kitchen utensils has a specific function, like chopping, slicing, or filleting food.
All knives, however, are pretty much constructed of the same parts.
The Main Part Of The Knife - The Blade
The blade is pretty self-explanatory, being the metal part of the knife used for cutting, from the handle to the tip. It’s the most important part of the knife, and the quality of the blade determines how well the knife cuts. Good quality blades make it much easy to do food preparation for Cooking.
A Better Bolster
The bolster is the small part between the blade and the handle, connecting the two together. It’s essential the bolster holds the handle and blade securely together so the knife doesn’t fall apart.
It’s worth noting, however, there’s an advantage to having a bolster that doesn’t reach the full width of the blade. That might seem sturdier, but it gets in the way of sharpening the blade. It works a lot better if the bolster doesn’t quite reach the bottom edge of the blade for just that reason.
The Whole Tang
The tang is an extension of the blade. This extension runs into the handle, providing a way to attach it to the knife blade. It also helps give the knife a good balance. The tang running into the handle also strengthens the knife, making it more durable.
Sometimes a tang runs only partway into the handle, and other times it goes the entire length of the handle. A well constructed knife has a tang that runs the full length of the handle, making it strong and well-balanced.
Getting A Handle
You need a way to safely hold a knife, and that’s the handle. The handle wraps around the tang and holds it securely. A handle can be composed of a variety of plastics, or made of metal or wood.
Not only should the handle should be sturdy, but it should also be easy to hold. Since you use a knife a good bit in the kitchen, it’s much better if it’s a good fit to your hand.
Checking the different parts of the knife for quality gives you an idea what to look for when buying a good knife. When buying a knife, however, you’ll discover there’s a wide variety of types available. Some of these include:
· Boning Knife
· Butter Knife
· Cheese Knife
· Chef’s Knife
· Cleaver
· Deli Knife
· Filet Knife
· Frozen Food Knife
· Mincing Knife
· Paring Knife
· Sandwich Knife
· Serrated Knife
· Slicing-Carving Knife
· Steak
· Utility
There are also specialty knives for chestnuts, clams, grapefruits, deveining, lettuce and oysters, plus specialty knives for different types of cuisines such as Japanese and Asian.
It’s fortunate you don’t need to buy every type of knife out there. That would be a major expense for sure.
The Bare Essentials of Knives For The Kitchen
While every knife has a use, most people don’t need so many of the more specialized knives. Everyone needs a few essential knives, however, in their kitchen. These versatile knives are able to do all kinds of foods preparation.
The Paring Knife
If you don’t have any other knife, you need a paring knife. It’s got a straight blade with a sharp edge, and is a smaller knife. Paring knives run from about three to five inches long with a thin blade that tapers to a point at the tip.
Easily held and used, the paring knife is quite useful. As the name indicates, the main function of a paring knife is for paring foods. It’s also good for cutting up small items, coring apples and such, and mincing garlic and other foods. Each and every kitchen should have at least one good paring knife.
A Knife For A Chef
The Chef’s or Cook’s knife is another versatile knife. There are several different lengths of chef’s knives, running from about 6 inches to 12 inches long. Mini chef’s knives are the smaller sizes. A smaller handed person will find the mini chef knives work better for them that the larger size. The larger chef knives are handier for people with bigger hands that allow the bigger chef knives to balance better in their hands.
The chef knife picks up where the paring knife leaves off, and can cut bigger vegetables, fruits and meats. A chef’s knife works well for slicing foods, plus chopping and mincing foods. The bigger size makes it better suited for the heavy duty work, and making thicker slices than a paring knife.
The Serrated Knife
Instead of a straight edge like the paring and chef knives have, the serrated knife has notches in the blade. It can be anywhere from 5 to 10 inches long. A serrated knife is best used for foods that are hard on the outside, while being soft on the inside. A good example is a loaf of homemade bread since it’s crusty hard on the outside, and softer on the inside. The serrated knife is also good for slicing other fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes.
Put A Cleaver To Good Use
You could make do with a paring knife, chef’s knife and serrated knife, but there’s one other blade that is highly useful in the kitchen. This knife had a very wide blade which is usually about 6 inches in length.
Just like any other kitchen knife, a cleaver can chop and shred foods. However, it really excels at pounding and crushing foods. Another good use for the cleaver is cutting through hard materials such as chicken bones.
Not only can a cleaver pulverize meat, but the flat of the blade can be used to crush garlic and other herbs. A cleaver usually comes with a hole near the end of the blade so it can be hung up somewhere out of the way. This helps keep the blade sharp, and prevents the problem of the cleaver taking up so much space in a kitchen drawer.
Choose Good Quality Knives For The Kitchen
Whatever knives you chose, get the best quality you can. It makes food preparation easier to have good quality knives, and since you’ve got eat, it’s better to make fixing meals more enjoyable.
The more you cook, the more you will appreciate using good quality knives, and may wish to expand your selection to include more types. The chef’s knife, paring knife, serrated knife and cleaver make a good basic set of knives for starters however.
Every kitchen can use a few good knives.
Posted
on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 6:09 am and is filed under Cooking Tips.
RSS 2.0 feed
| leave a response | trackback