I gotta buy a decent knife set for my wife before she kills me. Don't want to break the bank on anything. Will $100-$200 get me something decent enough? Suggestions?
99% of people really only need one or two good knives. In particular, a large Chef's knife & a smaller paring knife. In addition, you may get knives for bread, spreads, and cheese blocks. Here are my recommendations:
- 9.5" Dalstrong chef's knife: ($118) This knife is easily worth five or ten times the money. If you only get one knife, get this one, and then buy the rest as budget allows.
- 4" Dalstrong paring knife: ($65) Paring knives are awful for things like cutting apples or doing quick chopping on small items.
- 9" Victorinox serrated bread knife: ($26) I have a bread knife that costs 4x as much, but this is actually my go-to. Slightly curved, serrated, just does a great job for a low price & is lightweight.
- Zyless spreader: ($5, buy several - for butter, mayo, etc.) Magic. Buy 3. I keep one in a mason jar next to my butter crock & use the others for Hellman's, Grey Poupon, peanut butter, jelly, etc.
- OKP2 cheese knife: ($15) This is a weird little plastic knife. Cuts cheese pretty dang decently though!
- Flex-rod knife block: ($27) Basically a universal knife stand. Personally, I have a Saf-T-Knife Station from San Jamar, but that's a bit too clinical for most people's kitchens, haha.
From there, you can get other specialty knives, depending on how you like to cook - a boning & filet knife, a cleaver, and so on. Most of the time, I just grab my Chef's knife. If I'm doing bread, then bread knife. Paring knife gets used from time to time. Plastic knife especially for cheese. Those Zyless spreaders just work great, it's like a combination of a butter knife & a spoon for spreading condiments & jellies & jams & nut butters & stuff really nicely. I've been through many knives over the years & the list above is my standard recommendations when people ask what knives to get. Around $270 for everything (assuming you buy 3 of the Zyless spreaders). Not a small investment, but it's all excellent-quality equipment that will be a joy to use & serve you for years to come. It's hard to express how amazing it is working with a good-quality Chef's knife too...I fought cooking growing up because we had terrible, terrible knives lol. Cutting was a chore & nothing worked right...bread would tear, meat would be a hackjob, etc. Life in the kitchen is so much better with a great knife!
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