Your knife collection
We're all keen cooks and know the most important tool in our kitchen is the knife, what's your knife collection like?
Posted Aug 4, 2014, 10:39 PM UTC
29
I buy decent steel, cheap-as-dirt knives at flea markets and thrift stores and then sharpen the hell out of them. In many cases, the shittier the knife the better the sharp . You only have to watch out for rust and sharpen twice a month instead of once a month.
For example here is my $12 knife from an Odd Lot store that I've been using since 2000: http://i.imgur.com/pgc8ZoE.gif http://i.imgur.com/rVkgaB6.gif
2
That's pretty impressive, does the metal bend or chip before it needs resharpening? How do you sharpen them? Water stones? Also, at what sort of angle?
1
The edge is usually impacted or bent before re-sharpening. I use King waterstones. I have a 250/1000 and a 6000. The only time I use the 250 is when I have to establish a new edge or rehab a knife that's really been abused. For whatever reason I haven't gotten around to getting a honing rod, so I just use the 6000 to hone and polish every few days depending on usage. And the 1000 for sharpening once a month in the normal run of things. Party/BBQ season takes more sharpening. I can't be sure about the angle - probably 10-12 degrees on each side of the blade. I use the flattened core from a roll of kitchen paper towels for big sheaths, and rolled up notepaper for the small ones.
Here is my rag tag collection. Cost from smallest to largest: $1, $5, $12, $12 http://imgur.com/awDAubA
1
Nothing impressive. I have a bunch of Kai Pure Komachi knives that I found as a kit on clearance for very cheap; they work pretty well.
I also have a Shun Classic 8" Chef's and 4" paring knives properly stored in a separate drawer for my own use when noone's looking.
1
Honestly, 99.9999% of my knife usage is met by either my santoku or a vegetable peeler. Maybe once a month I'll pull out the Chinese cleaver, but otherwise that covers everything I need.
1
I've got a few knives, but the interesting ones are an Opinel No 8 and a Mora No 2. They're not traditional, but they work fine as paring knives and are easy to keep very sharp.
1
[deleted]
1
I use these two knives for 99% of everything I do:
Richmond Artifex 240 Gyuto and the Tojiro ITK 120 petty.
Both are inexpensive and both are great as a home cook. The Richmond gets very sharp and holds the edge pretty well. The Tojiro gets incredibly sharp but does not stay as sharp for as long.
I use a whetstones to sharpen them and an Idahone 12'' fine ceramic steel to keep them going between sharpening.
If I had to do it all over again I'd probably go a bit longer on the Petty, but I don't see any reason to buy another knife for the time being (other than the fact that I just want to buy more cool knives).
1
[deleted]
1
Sharp
And varied!