Should have said – the rotten knives are from Chicago Cuttlery.
I second the Henckels. We have several, and the wife is making a point of giving me a new one every Christmas.
Ah, but there’s also a rule in homebrewing that eventually you have to replace your plastic gear (especially buckets), as sooner or later you’re gonna get microscratches that you won’t get clean. Come to think of it, I suspect that’s what caused my last infected batch.
I’ve worked in a few kitchens, from chain bar & grill joints to high end steak joints. The common factor on cooking equipment has always been durability and inexpensiveness. Cooks, like miners, merchant marines, and other professional thieves, will make off with whatever isn’t nailed down, so either you buy something too heavy to rip off, or too cheap to be worth it (or at least won’t break the bank when you have to replace it weekly). Also, while you may have one set of cookware at home, a medium sized commercial kitchen will have the equivilent of a dozen or more. There’s also a signficant difference in the way you cook and clean up in a commerical kitchen versus home; at home, you might use nonstick cookware that lets you get away with a little squirt of oil and survives a few years of daily use in your home dishwasher; in a commercial kitchen, between the abuse it gets in use and the scalding, caustic washer environment the “nonstick” coating won’t last more than a few hours. Don’t want it to stick? Heat up the skillet, give it a couple big squirts of oil or butter and keep it moving. (Even those “lo-cal” meals you get eating out aren’t especially skimpy on the calories.)
With regard to knives and cutting boards, the basic points have already been made; it’s cheaper to buy cheap knives and replace them often than expensive, hard to sharpen knives that get stolen or broken. Most high grade prep cooks and sous chefs have their own personal knife roll, anyway, and those fuckers will shiv you faster than a Folsom con if you so much as touch it without permission. The NSF grade knives with soft plastic handles don’t slip and are easy on the eyes of a health and sanitation inspector, and while wood handles and cutting boards may well be more germ-resistant than plastic, every kitchen I’ve ever worked in had those big slabs of UHMW cutting surfaces all over the place; they’re easy to clean and bleach, they don’t crack or peel, and they’re about as close to indestructible as depleted uranium armor.
Not sure what you mean; the bottom grade of CC knives–especially the serrated ones–are consumer-grade crap, but that’s true of Henckels and Wusthof as well. Chicago Cutlery’s better lines of knives are quite decent, and they’re one of the few makers left of good carbon steel kitchen cutlery, if that’s your bag. Their high carbon stainless–essentially 440C steel–is much easier to sharpen than the molybendium alloys found in most German knives, and while I won’t claim that they make as good a knife as Global or Henckels Five Star, they’re quite decent for a home kitchen.
Most of the so-called professional cookware you see at Sur La Table and the like is massively overpriced gadgetry that would last only minutes in a commerical kitchen, either because it isn’t robust enough to hold up or because it takes way too long to use and clean up. Cooks use a few basic tools that are simple, durable, reliable, and easy to wash along with a lot of hard-learned technique. This, more than anything, is what seperates a commercial cook from a cooking enthusiast.
Stranger
We have a set of Cutco knives of which I am very fond. They don’t ever need sharpening.
Been a cook…chef…manager in restaurants for 30+ years.
It all comes down to the bottom line; What will hold up the best in a commercial setting. Large pots, pans, roasters etc are VERY costly. Typically I would purchase for function and durability, not for looks or a name.
As for knives, I agree, in better houses cooks and chefs use their own, personal knives and* DO NOT *touch mine…I have a pretty extensive mixed set of Henckels and Wustofs. The are now resigned to home use as I am now in management.
As for sanitation and health department requirements BMalion is partially correct, they TYPE of wood is very important…maple is great and very sanitary, though most Health departments still prefer Polycarbonate cutting boards.
FairyChatMom.…I would start with 3 good knives for her; A 10" chef knife, a 6" chefs/utility knife (my favorite) and a 2.5" pareing knife…you could get all three in a good quality for around 100-125 usd.
For the record…I would NEVER put any (other than table knife) in a dishwasher…never ever…the chemicals are VERY caustic.
tsfr
Dang Stranger looks like we are on the same page on this one…hey, maybe we even slung hash together…LOL
tsfr
To each his or her own, but…I have a friend who has a set of these, and I just can’t get over how totally wrong they are in every concievable way. It’s not just that they’re serrated–which in my mind should be a capital crime for anything except a scalloped edge on a bread knife–but the shape of the handles, the profile and balance, the length of the chef’s knife (which seems to be just slightly shorter than a broadsword), and the clearly soft, low-grade stainless steel just grates on me like a herd of kindergardeners with kazoos. The fact that the smaller blades are all serrated makes them all but useless for fine work like delicate peeling, cutting soft vegetables, and fine slicing, and the chef’s knife is too unwieldy for comfortable mincing and chopping. When I go over to her house to cook, I have to bring my own set of knives.
Sorry; I don’t mean to rag. I’m just kind of taken aback that anyone really likes these things. I guess it’s whatever you’re used to using.
Stranger
Speaking from my not very extensive experience, sometimes the “professional” equipment just isn’t the best you can get. I work in a kitchen, and we have 3 large knives that the staff share (there are never more than 5 people on staff, and usually only 2 in the kitchen). One of the knives is a very expensive Henckel, one came in a set for, like, 40 bucks and the third is a big ol’ wooden handled one of indeterminate origin and age. The Henckel is the worst of the bunch. It doesn’t stay sharp, the handle isn’t shaped well and it just doesn’t feel nice to cut with. The cheap one is pretty good, but the big wooden handled one is fantastic. It glides along the food, and even though I carelessly nicked myself while washing it once, I still like it. My boss agrees.
I’ve got a set of Cutco that I bought in 1975. I spent just over $200, and besides the knives and utensils, I got steak knives and a cutting board and a pair of scissors and an electric fry pan and a cookbook… I’ve had 2 knives and a spatula replaced free when they broke. I looked for a set for my kid, and I couldn’t get half of what I’ve got for twice what I paid… Yeah, inflation.
I don’t mind spending a couple hundred for her since I want her to have some that will last. I appreciate all the links - I’ll study them.
And I agree on the Chicago Cutlery - I got a set for free - and they’re worth less than that. Ick!
Do they make cheapos? Because I have Walnut Tradition knives that I like just fine. (And that is a very good price - I bought mine piece-by-piece and probably spent three times that.)
Not all of the knives are serrated. To each his own, I guess. I used to have Henckels, and prefer these.
We also have Calphalon and Le Creuset pots and pans. Too physically heavy for industrial use, I’d say.
If you’ve got time, you could probably turn those into a decent set of knives. Get yourself a coarse whetstone and just grind those serrations out. (Have I done this to a pair of knives? You bet!) Or you could just bring them to a sharpener and ask him to give your knives a haircut. Judging from how much metal they remove when dealing with knives I’ve used in restaurants, that will not be a problem. (But sir, this was my cleaver and you’ve turned it into a paring knife with a very large handle!)
I’ve got two rules about knives: 1) When choosing a knife, I’m always concerned about balance and heft (how it fits in my hand). What suits me may not suit you.
- There’s an inverse relationship between how long a blade will keep an edge and how easy it is to sharpen and hone. Soft steel won’t hold an edge long, but you can sharpen it yourself with ease. My Wusthofs and Henckels are a bitch and a half to sharpen, but they’ll hold their edges for several years of home use.
If you’ve got time, you could probably turn those into a decent set of knives. Get yourself a coarse whetstone and just grind those serrations out. (Have I done this to a pair of knives? You bet!) Or you could just bring them to a sharpener and ask him to give your knives a haircut. Judging from how much metal they remove when dealing with knives I’ve used in restaurants, that will not be a problem. (But sir, this was my cleaver and you’ve turned it into a paring knife with a very large handle!)
I’ve got two rules about knives: 1) When choosing a knife, I’m always concerned about balance and heft (how it fits in my hand). What suits me may not suit you.
- There’s an inverse relationship between how long a blade will keep an edge and how easy it is to sharpen and hone. Soft steel won’t hold an edge long, but you can sharpen it yourself with ease. My Wusthofs and Henckels are a bitch and a half to sharpen, but they hold their edges for several years of home use.
Yeah, Chicago Cutlery makes cheapos, alright. But I’ve also got a set of the Walnut Tradition, which I like just fine.
(Anyone in here want to recomment a sharpener for them?)
I was under the impression that Starving was speaking of granton edges. If that is the case, you certainly don’t want to try to grind them out.
Not unless you did so in KC. I think this probably falls more in the line of “great minds think alike,” or more probably that all kitchens are exactly the same, only different.
One good point that you made which deserves repeating:
One example of these three general classes of knife, plus a cheap serrated bread knife, should serve for 95% of all kitchen cutlery needs. There’s no reason to buy a 12 piece block of knifes with three different sizes of utility knife, et cetera. If you’re doing something special, like sushi or delicate trim work you might want a specialty knife for that, but those four should set up anyone quite well. One additional item you might want to get is a good honing stone, especially a diamond hone. Keeping the blades sharp is the best way to avoid accidents.
Yeah, Chicago Cutlery, like virtually all of the other kitchen cutlery makers, has a bargin basement line that isn’t worth the effort it takes to pick it up off the shelf. Cutlery is an investment in good cooking technique; don’t buy it at the local Wal-Mart.
Stranger
Yeah, that’s actually indirectly how I ended up with my current set rather than the hand-me-down crappy set I had years ago; I sliced a chunk off the tip of my finger while using a dull knife to cut an onion, and not long afterwards saw an interview with violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, in which she talked about how she had almost ended her music career by trying to slice an onion with a dull knife. After comparing the cost of a decent set of knives to the cost of an ER visit and rehab, I decided to spring for the knives.
I do believe that is the exact set ‘gracing’ my counter. $30? Gee, thanks, Sis-in-law.
At least, for that price I won’t feel guilty tossing most of them into the trash.
Hell, the chef’s knife and the bread knife probably make up 90%. They certainly do in my kitchen. I got a 6-pc set of the cheap Henkels about eight years ago, and an 8" Global chef’s about five years ago. I haven’t bought another knife since, and I can’t remember the last time I used something other than the Global or the bread knife.
(I am thinking about adding a nice santoku knife to the arsenal.)