Kitchen Knives Buying Guide

When it comes to cooking, one of the most reliable tools in your culinary arsenal is the trusty kitchen knife. A good quality knife you feel comfortable using can be one of the most effective kitchen tools in your cutlery drawer, minimising the effort needed to chop, slice, and dice your way to delicious food.

But how do you choose the best kitchen knives for you and your style of cooking? First, let’s take a look at the different types of kitchen knives and their associated purposes to find the best knives for your kitchen.

The chef’s knife is the most versatile blade in your kitchen arsenal, featuring a broad, sharp blade optimal for dicing, slicing, chopping, and the majority of your prep tasks. The chef's knife will most likely be one of the most common blades used in day-to-day cooking. 

Your go-to knife for cutting through meat and poultry, the carving knife is characterised by a long, narrow blade. The length is designed to minimise the amount of sawing back and forth across the surface of the meat while the narrower blade minimises the amount of resistance when cutting. 

A paring knife is designed to prepare fruits and vegetables, in fact, the word pare means ‘to trim something by cutting away its outer edges’. The paring knife is a specialty blade for produce and can come in straight and curved variants. While a vegetable peeler can perform a similar function to the paring knife, the paring knife can also easily slice strawberries, cut citrus fruit, slice carrots, and other intricate cutting tasks where a larger knife would be unwieldy. 

The utility knife is a versatile general-purpose blade with a size falling in between the paring knife and chef's knife. As the name suggests, the utility knife is designed for a large variety of different cutting tasks, from cutting smaller cuts of meat to preparing vegetables. 

The Santoku knife is a general-purpose knife which is used in a similar fashion to the chef’s knife. The Santoku knife originated in Japan and features a wide sheepsfoot blade (straight blade with an unsharpened back spine which curves down to meet the straight edge) which is thinner than a typical chef’s knife. This allows for more precise slicing. 

The purpose of this knife is very much in the name. Bread knives feature long, serrated blades designed to easily saw through light and airy bread without crushing it. If you have or use a bread maker, a bread knife will make a natural companion. Due to the serration, bread knives can also be good for cutting softer vegetables such as tomatoes. 

A sausage knife has a serrated blade designed to cut through the skin of sausage, salami, or similar products. A specialty blade in a similar fashion to the paring knife, the sausage knife can get plenty of use every time you fire up the BBQ. 

A filleting knife is commonly used with fish, featuring a thinner, flexible blade designed for precise cuts. Filleting knives feature an upward curve designed for long steady cuts, which is particularly useful for separating the skin from the meat of fish. 

Often used interchangeably with a filleting knife, a boning knife is used for separating meat from bone and features a thicker, stiffer blade to slice through tougher chunks of meat. 

While not a knife, the carving fork is a common inclusion in knife blocks. It’s designed to securely hold food items such as meat, fish, and poultry, securely in place while you cut. Aside from being a cleaner way to cut through your meat, a carving fork keeps your fingers out of the way of the blades, for safer serving. 

Kitchen shears are a versatile tool in the kitchen designed for a multitude of different purposes. Most often kitchen shears are used to break down poultry, cut herbs, and other various cutting tasks in the kitchen. They also often include grips between the handles designed to crack the shells of shellfish or nuts. 

There are numerous considerations to focus on when looking at picking up a new kitchen knife, which can contribute to the overall experience of using the knife. 

Purpose is one of the biggest factors when looking at a knife. Sure, you can use a general-purpose chef’s knife for the majority of cutting tasks but each knife has been designed to perform a specific culinary task. If you tend to perform lots of precision cutting, a paring knife will come in incredibly handy, while filleting fish is a lot easier with a filleting knife.

You need to look at how you prepare food and cook and purchase knives to suit those requirements. 

Brand loyalty is fine but when building your optimal set of knives, it doesn’t factor in too much. You may like the feel of a German-made Wusthof chef’s knife but prefer the balance of a Japanese Global paring knife. Build your knife set based around how you cook and how each knife feels. 

The handle is where you exert control of the blade and needs to be the right shape and style for you to undertake your cutting tasks. There are many different types of handles, such as the common western-style handle or an octagonal handle which is designed for rotating the blade without needing to grip harder.

Since the blade of your knife is going to be doing all the cutting work, you’re going to need to find a blade with high quality steel. Typically, a more expensive blade will have higher quality steel but it’s always important to check each knife.

High-quality steel can hold a sharper edge for longer and be sharpened easier, which increases the performance of your blade.

Knives at Appliances Online are made from stainless steel or Global’s proprietary CROMOVA-18. 

A common steel for kitchen knives, stainless steel is resistant to corrosion due to high levels of chromium. The type of stainless steel may differ depending on the type of knife and the different components. High-quality stainless steel is long-lasting and can effectively hold an edge.