What knives are the best?

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If you were to ask 10 different chefs this questions, you'd most likely get 10 different answers ranging from Wustof to Global. Personally and professionally, I've been a Misono user for over 17 years. Use what you like, and what fits your budget and frequency of use.
I agree with the IC. As important as choosing a brand is, it's more important to try out a knife and make sure it's comfortable and balanced in your own hand. The chef's knife that came with the knife kit I got in culinary school is too long for me. It works great for DH. I like my German-made Wusthof santoku 7-inch knife.
 
There may be some that are technically superior due to the materials they are made of, and so on, but there his nothing more important ( to me ) than trying them out before buying. When I got engaged, one of our engagement presents was a set of knives that cost hundreds of dollars. They were top notch, and a popular brand ( I don't remember which brands as it was decades ago). Years later I went to a food and wine show, and one of the vendors sold knives. I tried them out myself. They fit my hands perfectly, well balanced and cut well. I felt like I had much more control over what I was cutting than my expensive knives. They only cost $30 each. They are now my favorite knives and have been using them for years. They may not hold a sharp edge as long as more expensive knives, but they feel like they were custom made for me. That being said, a friend got me a " make your own knife" kit. Basically, it comes with a blade, and you assembled, shape , and polish the handle to personalized it. That one actually feels better in my hands, cause I was able to personalize the fit myself. That one has actually become my most used knife recently. Long story short, my advice would be to do some research, narrow it down to a few knives, then go and try them out to make the final decision.
 
Please demonstrate objective knife performance. How is it measured and quantified?

Because if you come down to a judgement system like gymnastics, is not objective.
You are welcome to come to my kitchen and I will demonstrate it for you. It is absolutely objective. Sorry. I do knives for a living and have for the past 26 years. Come ahead. I'll provide some useful training while you are here.
 
The criteria you have listed (for as much objectivity as you've offered) are thinness and hardness.

Alone these don't mean what you think they do.

For a given thickness, you can have many different potential taper angles depending how "tall" the blade is and how far up the blade its' sharpened. And many aren't tapered at all any more. A Victorinox paring knife is far thinner than the chef's knives you're talking about for example, but is also "shorter". So you have less distance to achieve the taper towards the edge. I've not measured them but I suspect the paring knife in question doesn't taper at all really, they just ground an edge on a thin hardish piece of steel. Sufficient for a paring knife.

And many chef knives have a distal taper too, so thinness/thickness varies across the length of the blade.

So what do you mean by thinness. Which thinnesses are good and which are bad and why?

Hint, it depends on what you want the blade to do. Flexibility in a boning knife can be desirable, but it often depends on the user preference as you can get both flexible and rigid ones.

Thinner Japanese blades are often desribed as "whippy" for example, a negatively perceived characteristic for many. So it's not just about absolute thinness.

Hardness also isn't an absolute. Higher values lead to more chipping and brittleness in all steels. The degree varying with the metallurgy. But those are negative attributes so higher hardness isn't absolutely better, but a trade off of attributes related to the steel itself.

Most of the big name brands are in the 58 hardness region, not that removed from the 61 and 62 of the Japanese steels. So you need to explain why those differences are meaningful.

You can't talk hardness meaningfully without a deep dive in to metallurgy and temper and heat treatment, hopefully with a cryo quench. You can take a lesser steel to a high hardness, but it just makes it chip prone. I have a gifted blade (I don't like) that claims it's AUS8 at 62 RC. It can't hold the edge it takes at that hardness if true. And it certainly doesn't behave like it's that hard either.

I'm kind of interested that there has been as much discussion of handles. If you're using a pinch grip which most chef's use, there's not much difference between handles.

Buying a knife is, I think, about buying into a system within a given price point.

Will the owner sharpen it themself, or do they hire that out. If they're doing it themself, what gear do they have and is it appropriate to the knife they'll get.

For a lower budget, a Japanese blade and waterstones may not fit.
 
I will try to respond tomorrow. We are having some problems here at the moment.
 
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Anyone who insists that they know the BEST knives - the best knives for everyone is f.o.s. There is no such thing. Period. Not German, not Japanese, not anything.

As has been said so many times in this thread already, the best knife is one that fits your hand comfortably, and has a weight that matches your strength and skills. It doesn't matter what the steel is, how often you need to sharpen it, what the degree of the bevel, or anything else. As long as you keep it sharp (and that includes doing it by hand, using an electric device, or sending them out) a knife will do its job.

Actually, if your kitchen skills are good, you can effectively use a knife picked up in the grocery store. Just like pots & pans, utensils, dishes, we buy what we like and what we can afford.

Back in 1983, Jacques Pepin himself took an old knife from my hand and showed me how to use it properly. It was a knife out of a drawer, not in very good shape. I was blaming the knife for my efforts. His cuts were outstanding - mine improved dramatically after that impromptu lesson. And I learned that equipment doesn't make you a better cook.
 
The criteria you have listed (for as much objectivity as you've offered) are thinness and hardness.

Alone these don't mean what you think they do.
They mean exactly what I know they do

For a given thickness, you can have many different potential taper angles depending how "tall" the blade is and how far up the blade its' sharpened. And many aren't tapered at all any more. A Victorinox paring knife is far thinner than the chef's knives you're talking about for example, but is also "shorter". So you have less distance to achieve the taper towards the edge. I've not measured them but I suspect the paring knife in question doesn't taper at all really, they just ground an edge on a thin hardish piece of steel. Sufficient for a paring knife.
A victorinox knife has one of the two magical characteristics which is a thin blade. It is missing the hardness part, however. The reason Victorinox knives are so popular other than their price is that they cut better than knives with thicker blades. Consider the razor blade. It is so thin that it will out cut any knife but its size and flexibility make it the wrong thing to replace kitchen cutlery. The thinner the blade the less resistance to cutting. Always. Can a kitchen knife be too thin? Of course. We will get into that.

The other element is the hardness of the steel. A 15 degree per bevel angle will cut better than a 20 degree per bevel angle. But if the steel isn't hard enough, the edge can fail requiring it to be ground to a more obtuse angle. It the blade edge fails or chips then the bevel angle is too acute for the steel and the application. Those angles are same regardless of the thickness of the blade


And many chef knives have a distal taper too, so thinness/thickness varies across the length of the blade.

So what do you mean by thinness. Which thinnesses are good and which are bad and why?

Hint, it depends on what you want the blade to do. Flexibility in a boning knife can be desirable, but it often depends on the user preference as you can get both flexible and rigid ones.

The right thickness is the amount necessary to ensure that the blade is rigid and straight. Any more thickness just adds more resistance to cutting. Yes, know there are flexible boning knives available. I don't own one. They are soft and require too much maintenance.
Thinner Japanese blades are often desribed as "whippy" for example, a negatively perceived characteristic for many. So it's not just about absolute thinness.

Hardness also isn't an absolute. Higher values lead to more chipping and brittleness in all steels. The degree varying with the metallurgy. But those are negative attributes so higher hardness isn't absolutely better, but a trade off of attributes related to the steel itself.
I've never heard knives referred to as whippy. So I wouldn't use the term often with your statement. Harder blades are more brittle for sure. They can accomodate more acute bevel angles but they can suffer chipping if the angles are too acute. The higher hardness is always better because it can accomodate a more acute bevel angle. Can a knife be too hard? Of course. A meat cleaver hardened to the level of a sushi knife will fail because of its application. These knives should be softer and have more obtuse angles.
Most of the big name brands are in the 58 hardness region, not that removed from the 61 and 62 of the Japanese steels. So you need to explain why those differences are meaningful.

You can't talk hardness meaningfully without a deep dive in to metallurgy and temper and heat treatment, hopefully with a cryo quench. You can take a lesser steel to a high hardness, but it just makes it chip prone. I have a gifted blade (I don't like) that claims it's AUS8 at 62 RC. It can't hold the edge it takes at that hardness if true. And it certainly doesn't behave like it's that hard either.
Hardness is meaningful because it determines to a large extent how acute the bevel angle can be as I said above. It has a secondary benefit in better edge retention. The difference between a blade tempered to RC58 and one hardened to RC62 is a lot. The RC58 blade requires a 20 degree per bevel angle while the RC62 blade may be able to handle a 12 degree per bevel angle. The more acute the angle the less resistance to cutting.

Heat treatment is a two step process. The hot steel is quenched to make the steel hard and then it is tempered to relax the steel to make it tougher (less brittle.) The tempering reduces quenched hardness but is important. AUS-8, like 440C generally tempers to RC56-58. I don't think it can be quenched to RC62 but I will take your word for it.

There are steels designed to be tempered to RC62. ZDP-189 is an example. It is not a good steel for a knife that will spend its life contacting a cutting board. AUS-8 would be better but would require a significantly more obtuse bevel angle. The stainless Japanese knives have steels appropriate for RC59-60.
I'm kind of interested that there has been as much discussion of handles. If you're using a pinch grip which most chef's use, there's not much difference between handles.

The best way to grip a kitchen knife is to "pinch" the blade just in front of the handle with the thumb and forefinger. The palm contacts the top of the handle and the other fingers prevent rotation. This is also the point at which the knife should balance. Balance is important for a commercial cook who uses a knife all day long because it is less tiring. It is less important for casual cooks like you and me.

You will find that most Japanese gyutos balance where they should while bolstered Euro chef knives are handle heavy. Japanese slicers are usually a little blade heavy but that is still less tiring than being handle heavy.
Buying a knife is, I think, about buying into a system within a given price point.

Will the owner sharpen it themself, or do they hire that out. If they're doing it themself, what gear do they have and is it appropriate to the knife they'll get.

For a lower budget, a Japanese blade and waterstones may not fit.

Why are they a system? If you were to inspect my knife block you would find that there aren't any knives there that share the same brand. I don't care that the knives were made by the same hands or their appearance. I care how they perform. I use the best knife I can for a particular application. About half of them are made from carbon steel instead of stainless steel.

Yes a cook should sharpen and maintain his or her own knives. They are the most important tools in the kitchen. Here is my advice. Do not use a powered sharpener. They remove more steel in the grinding process than necessary for sharpening and reduce the life span of the knives. I also recommend against bench stones unless one has the skill to use them properly. The best choice is what I call a guided manual sharpening system. While I am competent to use bench stones I use a guided system called the Edgepro because it is faster and I don't have to think about what I am doing.

The secret to sharpening a blade is maintaining a consistent angle throughout the process. The guided systems hold the blade at a consistent angle and that is why they are so effective. There are many guided system at many different prices. All of them will get the knives sharp.

Finally the cook should understand that the sharpening steel doesn't actually sharpen a blade. It straightens an edge that has become warped from contact with the cutting board. You still need to be able to grind away steel in order to sharpen a blade and the guided manual system is the ticket.

The traditional Japanese knives such as the yanagi have thick blades but with a single bevel. The inward side of the blade is flat and the outer side has the bevel which is fairly long because of the blade thickness. They are designed to be sharpened with bench stones. The angle consistency is automatic because you sharpen them by laying the bevel flat on the stone to grind and then you deal with the burr by laying the flat side of the blade on the stone. People who use traditional Japanese knives all use waterstones. It takes skill, though, to use them with Western pattern knives that have two bevels.

Japanese knives can get expensive but they don't have to be. I once sold a well used Masamoto gyuto on Ebay for $400 in an auction. It surprised me. On the other hand the MAC knives to which you referred earlier are pretty affordable and perform very well.

Let me know if I missed something.
 
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Just to pick a random point. By system I don't mean brand duplication. But you own a knife as part of a use and maintenance system. Buying a knife without also investing in how you'll maintain it is a poor purchase, if you don't already own appropriate sharpening gear.
 
I have waffled on posting this, but this knife is amazing for cardboard, Styrofoam, and flower foam. To be fair, I am a gadget lover....and this silly looking thing has yielded a lot of ribbing...until the person uses it. Both Frank and I receive medication in chill packs and this breaks them down fast - without all of the fuzz, debris, and mess. Also, it slices through cardboard like nothing else - not even my very nice and spendy scissors. Plus, it is pretty cheap and has lasted for years.
 
Just to pick a random point. By system I don't mean brand duplication. But you own a knife as part of a use and maintenance system. Buying a knife without also investing in how you'll maintain it is a poor purchase, if you don't already own appropriate sharpening gear.
No doubt about that. Knives need maintenance.
 
They are not. Unless you do not know how to use them or how to sharpen them.
Trust me. I've been in the knife business for 26 years and have used every brand of kitchen knife available. I'm a master at knife skills and knife sharpening. I can only assume you haven't tried light knives with thin hard blades. You should. You may sell all your Wusthof like I did.
 
I've been in business since I was 17, I am 63 today. Wusthof knives are excellent knives. Are there better knives out there? For sure. Are they for everybody, of course not. If you like Japanese knives, good for you, enjoy them. I love my Japanese knives. But to say that Wustoff knives are not good, and that is pretty much what you are saying, is absolutely wrong.
 
I've been in business since I was 17, I am 63 today. Wusthof knives are excellent knives. Are there better knives out there? For sure. Are they for everybody, of course not. If you like Japanese knives, good for you, enjoy them. I love my Japanese knives. But to say that Wustoff knives are not good, and that is pretty much what you are saying, is absolutely wrong.
I didn't say they were not good. I said they are inferior to Japanese knives.
 
People will always have differences of opinion. That's OK. What is not OK is refusing to let a person have his differing opinion.
I didn't refuse his opinion. I refused his fact. The fact is that Japanese knives outperform forged Euro knives because of their thin hard blades. I can prove my position and have proven it to the Wusthof rep that calls on my company. It is fine to prefer forged Euro knives to Japanese knives. It is not fine to argue that they perform as well as the thin hard blades of Japanese knives. It is incorrect. Sorry. Probably time for me to leave. Take care.
 
I didn't refuse his opinion. I refused his fact. The fact is that Japanese knives outperform forged Euro knives because of their thin hard blades. I can prove my position and have proven it to the Wusthof rep that calls on my company. It is fine to prefer forged Euro knives to Japanese knives. It is not fine to argue that they perform as well as the thin hard blades of Japanese knives. It is incorrect. Sorry. Probably time for me to leave. Take care.
Once you've made your point, there is little benefit to keep repeating it. It's clear you prefer Japanese knives. Good for you. I'm sure they can be great. Others prefer European style knives. I'm sure they can be great. I like the knives I have been using for over 20 years. I sharpen them myself and they do all I ask of them. They may be the Japanese or European. Not important. Let's move on.
 
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