What is the difference between a chef’s kitchen and a regular one? Of course, not only the amount of food preparation but also its variety. And this means that a chef or someone who is concerned about buying knives for professional cooking will have to solve two diametrically opposite tasks at once: to purchase Damascus Steel Kitchen knives for the most diverse operations and at the same time get by with a minimum number of them.
About fifty knives, of course, will help to cope with the most complex cooking techniques, but so many appliances in the kitchen are just a ruin. This means that you will have to select two or three of the most necessary knives from each category.
Utility knives
The first thing we will purchase is a pair of utility knives. One is unlikely to be enough: even if you work alone in the kitchen, you will need tools of different sizes. You can choose from the following types.
- Multifunctional knives of the Guyto family will be convenient for Europeans – they “know-how” to cope with meat, fish, vegetables, and bread.
- Sujihiki is a gastronomic knife for cutting ready-made dishes.
- Some knives of the Usuba family can also be used as universal knives for cutting meat and vegetables, such as kiritsuke. Among the knives listed in this material, it is interesting that it is made in the European tradition (it has a two-sided sharpening, which is uncharacteristic for old Damascus instruments).
Specialized knives
For meat and poultry
- Hankotsu – trimming and boning knife.
- Karibu – for those establishments that supply whole (uncut) carcasses of red meat.
- Yo-deba – for cutting hard carcasses of livestock and slicing frozen fish.
For vegetables
- Usuba – almost the entire family is designed for cutting and chopping vegetables and fruits.
- The already mentioned yo-deba will help to cope with hard vegetables, such as beets and daikon.
- Kawamuki will help not only cut but also peel vegetables.
For greenery
- A family of Nariki with one-sided or more familiar double-sided sharpening for Europeans. Since working with greens does not imply strong wear on the supplies, it will not be necessary to sharpen it often.
- Ceramic knives, for example, from Hatamoto, are also suitable for chopping greens. The advantage of ceramics is that it cuts for a long time without requiring sharpening, do not oxidize upon contact with organic matter, and do not leave a metallic taste on products.
Damascus steel Kitchen knives
Separately, it is worth mentioning the professional kitchens of Damascus establishments. The minimum set for them will consist of three types of knives:
- Deba-bocho (large heavy knife for butchering fish);
- Usuba-bocho/Kamagata Usuba-bocho or Nakiri-bocho (vegetable set);
- Yanagiba and Sashimi-bocho (knives for neatly slicing fish into fillets).
If the kitchen is focused on cooking traditional Damascus dishes (for example, if we are talking about a sushi bar or a yakitori serving yakitori, tempura, and kushiyaki), then the range of tools can be expanded by diversifying it with fish and specialized knives.
Special fish knife
First, of all (and mostly), these are knives of the deba family. Deba is positioned as a special fish knife. It is recommended to purchase both main types of deba at once: khon (deba) and ai (deba). Moreover, in ai (deba) the problem of multifunctionality is solved very interestingly: along the entire length of the cutting edge it has a different angle of convergence of supplies – closer to the heel, the blade is sharpened at a larger angle for cutting fish cartilage, but the point, as expected, serves for a neat cut of the filet.
If raw fish sashimi is on the menu, a Yanagi-ba knife and/or takoyaki are indispensable. The latter is also a professional model for cutting all kinds of seafood.
- Duckett is useful if you work with live, freshly caught fish in the sea (for example, if the institution is located on the shore or on a boat). For the most part, it is used onboard to quickly kill fish, but sometimes it is also needed in the kitchen if the fish “arrived” still alive.
- Are you cooking a lot of eel dishes? Choose a tool from a line of special knives. Cutting this fish – edosaki / unagisaki / Kiyosaki unagi / Kiyosaki / Nagasaki.
- As you might guess, sushikiri is used to make sushi – it is easy to cut sushi and rolls with it.
- If you are not just cooking from semi-finished products. But are preparing products from the very beginning, then you will need doglike and udonkiri – knives. For making traditional Damascus types of noodles, soba, and udon, respectively.
If some ready-made set does not suit you, you should not buy it. Selecting knives optionally for yourself is much more interesting, and most importantly, more effective.
Read More: What is a kitchen knife?
