Large Knife for Chopping

Cleaver-Style Kitchen Knife

A knife is a cook’s best friend. Take care of it (keep it sharp!) and it will make your life so easy and lovely. Ignore its needs and allow it to dull, and it can make your life miserable.

Another quality I look for in a knife is that it is more like a cleaver than a general chef’s knife (Check out the purty knife I got). It feels more evenly balanced in hand and can cut through meats like butter. The wide profile comes in handy when transferring your chopped ingredients from the cutting board.

A capable multi-tasker, it can handle all the chopping, dicing and slicing needs I have as a home cook. Chopping ingredients for a Bibimbap, slicing vegetables for Japchae, cutting pork Bossam into beautiful slices. It’s an excellent garlic smasher as well.

Small Knife for peeling

smaller knife for smaller hands

The Wife Who Also Lives Here seems to really prefer a small knife. For peeling fruits or cutting stems or leaves off fruits it seems to work well. It’s mostly a fruit knife… imo.

Knife Sharpener

A knife sharpener is an often-overlooked tool, but it’ll really make kitchen prep so much more enjoyable. You don’t need to do it often- it all depends on how much you use it.

But for the average home cook, I’d go by the tomato-cutting barometer- if you make a mess of the tomato when trying to cut it, give it a go with a sharpener. I prefer a honing rod like this, but The Wife likes to have a go with multi-purpose sharpener like this one.

For a more detailed analysis of knife sharpening know-how, Cook’s Illustrated has a very in-depth article here.

Of course, all this is personal preference. For a tool used so often, it’s worth spending some time to research and find your kitchen soulmate.

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