words Al Woods
Kitchen Essentials: Basic Types of Kitchen Knives
The following section introduces the most frequently used and essential types of kitchen knives – the ones that no cook, whether a professional or an amateur, should ever be without. The knives will help you accomplish a wide variety of tasks, so keep reading to learn the basic cutting essentials that should be in each kitchen.
1. Chef Knife
A chef knives are also referred to as t cook’s knives or chef’s knives has a long, broad blade with a straight edge. Its widest point is across the heel, tapering up to a finely pointed tip.
What Do You Use a Chef Knife For?
The chef’s knife’s curved blade makes it the ideal tool for chopping up and dicing many vegetables at the same time. Its broad heel means that it is capable of standing up to greater pressure when undertaking heavy-duty chopping, which makes it a great tool for cutting harder/thicker foods, such as parsnips, onions, or potatoes.
The chef knife is an amazing all-rounder, which makes it one of the most versatile knives in the kitchen, great for typical dicing and mincing tasks.
2. Utility Knife
The utility knife has a similar shape to a chef knife, but it is slimmer and smaller. Some of the best kitchen utility knives also have a sharp tip that tapers up towards its spine, which allows for more intricate work.
What Do You Use a Utility Knife For?
The utility knife is great when it comes to chopping up smaller food items as well as vegetables, such as shallots. It shares many of the chef knife’s qualities, but it can be a useful tool when you are working with smaller food items since it allows for more precise cutting. So, if the chef knife is a bit too big for the task at hand, you should consider reaching for the utility knife instead.
3. Paring Knife
The paring knife’s blade is short, slim, and evenly-sized. Its tip is also pointed. It is usually light to allow for easy handling while undertaking delicate tasks.
What Do You Use a Paring Knife For?
The paring knife is small but mighty and is used for cutting, chopping, and slicing fruits and vegetables. Still, it can be used for many other kitchen tasks. In spite of its small size, a paring knife makes light work of harder foods, such as potatoes and is still maneuverable enough to undertake delicate tasks such as trimming, peeling, and removing seeds from fruits and vegetables.
4. Bread Knife
The bread knife has a long blade that’s evenly-sized and a sharp serrated edge like that of a saw. It is designed for use on softer items.
What Do You Use a Bread Knife For?
The bread knife’s long blade and sharp serrated edge makes it a great tool for sawing through all kinds of bread, including crusty bread, bread rolls, bagels, and baguettes. The reason for this is that its grooved edge lets the chef cut through softer texture without crushing them out of shape.
You can also use a bread knife for slicing soft, fluffy cakes, since it can cut through them and not knock the air out of the sponge or even damage its overall shape. You can also use a bread knife for evening out your sponge cakes after baking if there’s no cake leveler in your kitchen.
The Best Knives for Meat Preparation
Meat usually requires careful preparation from delicate lamb joints to huge cuts of beef to poultry, using specialist tools. Thus, every meat-lover needs to know what’s the difference between a boning knife and a cleaver. The following is a brief discussion of the different types of meat knives, including the ideal types for various dishes.
5. Carving Knife
The carving knife has a long, slim blade that’s tapering to a sharp point. It is also referred to as a slicing knife and is a kitchen knife with one of the longest blades. It is narrow, which means that it can produce less drag while cutting through food, allowing it to create cleaner and more uniform slices.
How Do You Use a Carving Knife?
A carving knife is great if you want to serve meats such as pork, beef, lamb, or poultry since it produces thin, evenly-sized slices. It can also be used for tackling larger fruits and vegetables, such as zucchinis or melons that can be tougher to slice through using broader or smaller knives.
The long, thin blades of the carving knife also make it great for cake cutting since it is long enough to cut perfectly-sized slices in a single, smooth cutting motion.
6. Butcher Knife or Cleaver
The cleaver, which is also referred to as the butcher knife, has a flat, rectangular-shaped blade. It comes in various sizes, depending on their intended use. They are one of the heaviest and broadest knives, and sometimes feature a hole near the blade’s spine so that they can be hung up when not being used.
What Do You Use a Cleaver For?
A cleaver is used for chopping up raw meat, either for the purpose of dividing it into smaller portions prior to cooking or as part of the butchery process. Its large, heavy design means that you can even use it to cut through bone, which makes it a great knife for raw meat prep.
Given that it’s bulky in size, the cleaver is generally used only on raw meat as opposed to cooked food. The broad, flat, heavy surface of a cleaver also comes in handy if you want to crush garlic cloves or ginger against a chopping board.
7. Boning Knife
The boning knife has a slim blade and a very sharp edge that usually tapers upwards to a fine-pointed tip. It is fairly short (usually just around 6 inches) and features rigid construction, even though more flexible blades are available for delicate meat.
What Do You Use a Boning Knife For?
The boning knife is ideal for trimming cartilage and cutting meat bones to create the perfect cut or joint prior to cooking. It’s a great tool if you want to cut around bone without destroying the surrounding flesh since it has a slim blade as well as a pointed tip.
You can also use the strong, rigid blade to cut through cartilage. A slightly harder knife is ideal for de-boning beef or pork, while a more flexible blade is more suitable for poultry. Boning knives are designed to be both light and maneuverable, which means you can always count on them to be easy to use and comfortable.
