Lets see your favorite chef's knife.

[Tirvine]

I've been lusting for a nogent but can't ever seem to pull the trigger. I had a 14" K Sabatier chef knife for a while but sold it to a fellow cook at work and I'm now using a 360mm Sabun Gyuto (10" Hitohira Wa Gyuto for comparison). I find a large chef knife with a petty (using a Sakai Kikumori 180mm) is pretty much unbeatable for the large volumes of food I need to prepare in a day. Good choice with the F. Dick steel. I have the Dick Polishing Steel and the Balkan. I picked up the Titan with the super hard coating but find it produces a pretty poor edge, it's just too rough.

View attachment 1900063

A large chef's knife or a gyuto along with a petty is a terrific combination. Most home cooks seem to lean on their paring knives. I love the very small Nogent parer, but the petty does pretty much all the same things and more. The little straight edged and very pointed parer is, however, a terrific boning knife. Curiously, the conventional wisdom is that you need a bread knife. I find that the large chef's knife can do neater work with a crusty loaf...fewer wasted crumbs.

i have looked at those 14" K Sabs, but they seemed pretty specialized. A 14" slicer, however, would be terrific. I bought my son in law one. it seems ideal for thin slices of large cuts. He smokes a lot of beef briskets and pork shoulders. It is also able to make a gorgeous draw cut, no sawing, on things like pork belly or beef cheeks.

Those two knives are gorgeous. Here are my new knives, 11 1/2" and 7".

 

[thp001]

A large chef's knife or a gyuto along with a petty is a terrific combination. Most home cooks seem to lean on their paring knives. I love the very small Nogent parer, but the petty does pretty much all the same things and more. The little straight edged and very pointed parer is, however, a terrific boning knife. Curiously, the conventional wisdom is that you need a bread knife. I find that the large chef's knife can do neater work with a crusty loaf...fewer wasted crumbs.

i have looked at those 14" K Sabs, but they seemed pretty specialized. A 14" slicer, however, would be terrific. I bought my son in law one. it seems ideal for thin slices of large cuts. He smokes a lot of beef briskets and pork shoulders. It is also able to make a gorgeous draw cut, no sawing, on things like pork belly or beef cheeks.

Those two knives are gorgeous. Here are my new knives, 11 1/2" and 7".
View attachment 1900180

Interesting point about bread knives and something I've found out myself. In fact, if you look at early cutlery catalogs from about 1850 until around 1900 or a bit later there are no serrated bread knives. I have a Robert Herder "Hamburger" bread knife which is an old design that goes back to when bread was cut in hand and not on a board and it has a plain edge blade.

 

[Tirvine]

Interesting point about bread knives and something I've found out myself. In fact, if you look at early cutlery catalogs from about 1850 until around 1900 or a bit later there are no serrated bread knives. I have a Robert Herder "Hamburger" bread knife which is an old design that goes back to when bread was cut in hand and not on a board and it has a plain edge blade.

View attachment 1900526

My grandparents lived in San Francisco. They always had a loaf of Larrabaru's sourdough, a stick of room temperature butter, and a knife very much like that one on the kitchen counter. I miss that kitchen. Grandmother would roast three or four legs of lamb at a time. Twenty of us would have roast lamb on Friday and lamb curry with eight boys (forgive the rancorous reference to English domination of India, but that is what they were called) on Saturday. It was a weekend of big knives and marvelous food in the USA in the 1950s!

 

[Tirvine]

Interesting point about bread knives and something I've found out myself. In fact, if you look at early cutlery catalogs from about 1850 until around 1900 or a bit later there are no serrated bread knives. I have a Robert Herder "Hamburger" bread knife which is an old design that goes back to when bread was cut in hand and not on a board and it has a plain edge blade.

View attachment 1900526

I just checked this knife out on Bernal. Wow. Another great bread knife is the Au Sabot on Flotsam and Forks. It is serrated but marvelously sharp and effective. Speaking of slicing knives, have you checked the Au Nain on Bernal? It just looks like sheer joy. I think of slicing most any sort of roast quite thinly with such a knife.

 

[Wid]

After using the Moritaka 210mm Gyuto for a while I decided to get a 130mm petty of the same brand. It came with a pretty nice edge so I’ll leave it as is for now.