Kitchen Knives: The New Bling (2013) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Kitchen Knives: The New Bling (2013) [pdf]

oxfordsymposium.org.uk

54 pointsbookofjoe62 comments

What's truly amazing to me is the low cost of truly high quality kitchen knives available today.

Ikea sells a 3 knife set for $30[1] that is made with the exact same steel as high end German knife brands - x50crmov15.

IMO, the real problem with kitchen knives in most homes is they are woefully under-sharpened. A budget knife that's sharpened once or twice a month will completely outperform the most expensive knife that's never sharpened.

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1. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ikea-365-3-piece-knife-set-9034...

The material does make a difference when it comes to how long a knife keeps its edge once sharpened. Not that this makes up for the crazy prices.

I don't even have kitchen knives any more, I have one good (but still overpriced) knife [0] that I use for everything from cooking to carving wood.

[0] https://fallkniven.se/en/knife/nl5l/

Your overall point is well taken, but X50CrMoV15 is commodity stainless steel. Those German knives use it because people leave their knives out wet on their counters, not because it's amazing at cutting.

The worst is Misen, though, which brags about AUS8 steel as if it were Blue Paper Steel and not generic tool steel.

> Your overall point is well taken, but X50CrMoV15 is commodity stainless steel. Those German knives use it because people leave their knives out wet on their counters, not because it's amazing at cutting.

That's fair - I suppose I oversold "truly high quality kitchen knives".

I do think German knives generally tend toward softer steels on purpose to make them more amenable to occasional "abusive" treatment, which seems like a reasonable tradeoff for the average consumer.

I own AUS8 knife from another brand and am incredibly satisfied with it. Yes it's not super hard and you probably can't sharpen it to shave your beard smoothly, but it has very good hardness/plasticity trade-off for regular usage. I sharpen it once every one or two years and hone about every other day on cheap honing steel for 5 seconds, and it cuts paper sheet flawlessly all the time. With this little maintenance and performance I can't be happier.

I think this observation is very much on point. Imho, there's a bit of what amounts to fetishism in the knife-making community about steels. Truthfully, the primary differences should be in fit, finish, and balance for a knife. It's just as possible to put a fine edge on the cheapest steel in the world as as it is an expensive tool steel like 440C. Jay Fisher, a custom knife-maker, likes to makes the point that a ceramic flint-knapper can put an edge on a stone that will scare any knifemaker alive, as long as the edge doesn't accidentally touch anything too solid and chip.

An AUS8 blade hits a nice balance between corrosion resistance, end-user servicing, decent maximum hardness, and manufacturability, though focusing on "our steel is special" seems to sell blades. Plus, I think it's worth noting that if most manufacturers were to make blades out of more expensive knife making steel like S3OV, not only would they likely corrode, people would be close to incapable of properly caring for those blades properly anyway. It's not an easy task, especially for someone who is only using the knife to achieve their primary goal: cooking.

I don't get the steel fetishism either, and with kitchen knives it's clearly very much about environment: your fancy-pants pocket knife steel may not do well in an environment where it's sat around damp and with food residue on it for hours or days, shoved into a dishwasher, or whatever.

I'm not mad on pocketknives, but I've got a small handful in 440C, a couple in AUS-8, and then one in S35VN. The latter used to be considered fairly high end as a blade steel but now appears to be increasingly commonplace in even relatively inexpensive knives.

From a practical standpoint, and for my use cases, there's no significant difference between any of these, except that the S35VN is harder to sharpen.

I have no complaints with edge retention or sharpness for any of the 440C or AUS-8 knives I own even though they're looked down on as blade steels by the knife community and, in fact, my favourite pocketknife for everyday and DIY use is the very inexpensive Ontario Rat #1 in AUS-8. It fits my hand well, is a great cutting tool, and is incredibly easy to sharpen and maintain.

Even the cheapest knives from the grocery store will take on an impressive edge if sharpened well.

Except for very exotic alloys, the cost of metal is very small component of cost of the knife.

if i have to sharpen my knives twice a month, then i am not going to be happy. that's just to much effort. i want knives to be durable and ready to take any abuse.

i got a german sailor knife that has been with me for three decades. i have it sharpened every few years. i have used it as an axe to sharpen tent pegs while camping. nowadays it is reliably serving kitchen duties.

> if i have to sharpen my knives twice a month, then i am not going to be happy. that's just to much effort. i want knives to be durable and ready to take any abuse.

I find that frequent sharpening means that:

1. I can have very inexpensive knives and keep them quite sharp.

2. Keep the sharpening time pretty low ~ 30-60 sec.

3. Maintain my knife sharpening skills.

I can definitely understand why people would want to sharpen less often, particularly if they frequently steel their knives.

And copper pots!

Funny thing this article doesn't really talk about REALLY expensive knives. Just "Mall Fancy" (gatekeeper's delight: if you can buy it in a mall, it's not 'real' bling.) There's a custom knife store I visited in Portland last year that goes up to $3k for handmade knives.

Expensive knives are silly. $49 Victorinox is probably one of the best knives out there unless you're a sushi chef according to just about every review. I have one, it's great. Better than my Shyun for the price and easier to put on edge on.

But don't take my anecdote for it: go talk to a chef and ask what kind of knives they use. Know what the answer will be? In most restaurants they are from Sysco. Source: friends that work back of the house.

The Victorinox Fibrox has been a popular pick (and rhetorical tool for debunking Veblen knives) for years because Cooks Illustrated championed it, but it underperforms in tests and, in particular, has an apparently bad factory edge --- you could correct that, but I doubt many owners really do.

I think the Fibrox still works as a rhetorical tool. It's true that most people would be just as happy with a $50 Fibrox as they would be with an expensive Shun. But it's not the case that the Fibrox holds up well in serious tests against other knives.

The flip side of professional kitchens getting their knives from services is that they're also constantly refreshed with new sharp blades (the service takes the dulled blades back and replaces them with new ones), which is something that isn't true for home cooks. I wouldn't read too much into that.

(I have a Mac MBK-85; it's great. Just get a Mac.)

I know if you look at the woodworking hand tool community, it's almost dogma that the first thing you do with a new set of chisels or a plane is to put your own edge on it. And in the case of planes, the people who have been at it longer also polish the face down flat(ter) on a piece of float glass.

In fairness, it's also a lot easier to sharpen a chisel than a kitchen knife, and it's very difficult to work with a chisel at all if it's dull, unlike a chef's knife, which will blunder through most tasks at mostly the same speed even after you whack it against a brick.

> a chef's knife, which will blunder through most tasks at mostly the same speed even after you whack it against a brick.

What? this isn't true. a sharpened knife is a joy to work with and you can "feel" the difference.

It's true that a sharp knife feels great, but they said 'blunder' for a reason. A sharp knife will leave a clean cut on meat and not squish vegetables, but the question is if the average home cook cares enough about slightly squished vegs that he had to push through more than slice or a feathered meat cut when their goal is to put dinner on the table.

Yes. I think this is a distinction that might only be clear to people who have used woodworking chisels, which are simply useless when dull.

Yeah, most people don’t keep their knives sharp, so it doesn’t matter much what they have. The knives I use most at home are a couple of Dexter-Russel knives I got cheap at a restaurant supply shop on the Bowery a long time ago.

> that the Fibrox holds up well in serious tests against other knives.

I'd love to know more about this. What have you read on the topic?

I sharpen my 3 busiest knives every few weeks (10", boning, paring) while I'm doing my chisels and plane irons, so it is part of my meditation. Ommmmmm....

Just the WireCutter and Serious Eats reviews.

I need to be better about sharpening my knives. I took a class a few months ago (highly recommended! do this!) but haven't gotten it into my routine. The truest thing you can probably say about knife value for money is that it's entirely irrelevant if you aren't keeping your knives sharp, and most people don't.

My routine is to give my knife a couple passes over a leather strop loaded with 0.25 micron CBN abrasive every time I use it. This approach can keep a knife sharp almost indefinitely unless something chips or severely blunts the edge.

Underrated comment. Even a cheap knife sharpened with a cheap sharpener every once in a while will do better than an expensive one not sharpened for months at a time. I wouldn't necessarily waste time on advanced sharpening though - it's not something you're going to do regularly, unless you're really into knives. I have a set of sharpening stones I used exactly once. The result was great, but it took like half an hour to sharpen a single blade - no one has that kind of time. A cheap Accusharp sharpener does a good enough job that I can slice homegrown tomatoes without any issues. And it takes less than a minute to sharpen a knife with it.

I also enjoyed my class. We used a water stone, which I had thought about buying before. I also thought about getting a Belgian Stone (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgischer_Brocken)

The lesson was meditative, and I really liked it, but I realized that this way of sharpening knives is totally impractical for my day-to-day life.

In the end I followed the teacher's (also store owner) recommendation and got those two:

https://ioxio.de/sharpeing-rod-duo

https://www.windmuehlenmesser.de/en/product/streichriemen-ki...

That's enough sharpness for me, I don't need to slice a tomato horizontally without holding it with my hand. Although it looks cool on YouTube, and I certainly watched that more often than it would be sensible.

The best part: it's fast. Using the strop (before every use) is a matter of seconds, using the ceramic rod (every now and then) takes a minute or two.

Thanks for the pointer.

I'm surprised serious eats gave a knife with a bolster #1 spot. That's a hard stop in my book. I can see their point, the fibrox is a thick blade, but now it is wandering into subjective territory.

One of my biggest problems sharpening is cutting my 8000 grit stone when finishing my boning knife at the S-curve by the handle. I sometimes just skip that part, but I like to sharpen the entire blade.

>> I have a Mac MBK-85;

The crucial question (and the point of the article) is not that. The question is whether you actually use this $200 knife for cooking. :-)

Uh, yes. I cook a lot. (Also, I paid nothing close to $200 for it).

I have a pair of very fancy nakiris that Erin picked up when she was in Tokyo that I avoid cooking with (one, a blue steel not-especially-stainless one, I never use at all). That's something closer to a Veblen acquisition (though the nakiri I do sometimes use is a blast to cut with). The Mac is a workhorse. And: I mean, get _any_ Mac knife.

Heh, personal tastes matter.

A friend wanted a decent chef's knife but didn't know which one would be good. I have a Global, the handle of which he found too "flimsy". His hands are wider than mine, so I took a risk and bought him a Mac as a present. (~€90/~$130 at the time.) For me, the Mac handle is a bit too large - for him it was just about perfect.

More than a decade later the knife remains in active use. Friend went a bit posh, too: he bought a sharpening cradle with a slot for whetstone and alignment supports to make sure the angle is correct. He liked it so much he didn't want to risk mistreating the blade with bad sharpening.

Moral of the story? Try out a few decent ones and get the one that fits your hand well. Then maintain it properly. For a home cook (which I am), a good chef's knife - when not abused - will last for pretty much forever. I've had the Global for nearly 20 years and plan to have it around for 20 more.

The fibrox is fine, but a single 8" Shun chef's knife is near the price of an MBK-85 for a not-dissimilar level of performance.

I have a Fibrox santoku, Shun 7" Chef's knife (VG-10), Ohishi 270mm (VG-5), and some of the Ikea 365 knives (e.g. 6" chef's knife), as well as some K-Sabatier. For the money, the Ikea 365 knives outperform the Fibrox - they hold the edge much better. The K-Sabatier are better than the fibrox for not too much more money (and they're pretty classic). The Ohishi was the best value and is my favorite knife but it's a bit on the large side. I also have a few other random knives (arcos ham knife, dexter russel boning knife, mac bread knife)

I recommend the Ikea ones to most people. They are super cheap, sharp, and hold their edge pretty good. If they wanted an upgrade pick, I'd recommend an Ohishi or similar (there's a few similar ones online that are high quality), but I don't think buying a Shun isn't a terrible proposition - they are readily available in most markets and good quality. Buying a knife block isn't recommended though.

Relatedly - I usually buy family members getting married decent set for a gift too - and the smaller sets of Victorinox are usually nice.

About a decade ago I looked into this. I had a Shun Santoku (VG10), but my brother wanted to get me a nice knife as a wedding gift. I did a little research on the knife forums (very interesting world, I could see spending a lot of money on a combination of metallurgical tech and art if you get sucked into that).

Exotic stainless (e.g. powdered steel) sounded like it would be challenging for an amateur to sharpen, and I wasn't sure I could be trusted to take proper care of a carbon blade, so I hedged and went with a semi-stainless (SKD) 240mm Yoshikane wa-Gyuto. I kinda wish it had a little more belly, but it's sharp, cuts well, and is easy to sharpen.

I bought the Fibrox a few years ago, because it was cheap, had the Wirecutter recommendation (back then) and – it feels good in my hand.

I have pretty large hands, and generally less-than-stellar motor skills, so the heft of the thing and the feel suit me well.

I do sharpen it regularly, though.

> gatekeeper's delight: if you can buy it in a mall, it's not 'real' bling

Huh? Burberry and Louis Vuitton aren't 'real' bling? Tiffany and Cartier aren't real bling?

If you have to ask...

I don't. I know that they are.

These are brands where nearly 100% of the price of the good comes from the brand label.

> easier to put on edge on

The corollary to this is that they lose their edge quickly, which is annoying.

>> easier to put on edge on

> The corollary to this is that they lose their edge quickly, which is annoying.

Part of making a knife easy to sharpen is the materials. Your claim applies pretty well here.

Part of making a knife easy to sharpen is the geometry - specifically: a very small secondary bevel. Depending on the geometry, "easier to put on[sic] edge on" is only loosely related to "lose their edge quickly".

The Fibrox is a great knife for the price, but it definitely isn't even close to being one of the best knives out there. If you're happy with it, that's great but even a modest upgrade to a VG10 blade will allow for cleaner, thinner cuts.

Personally I use a handmade carbon steel janapese blade, which cost a few hundred $. Freshly sharpened, you can throw a piece of paper into midair and it'll slice cleanly through it, which is good enough for my needs[0]. Those $3k custom knives you see in portland are more about creating a work of art than an actual working tool.

0: I from time to time cook things requiring very thin slices of things (e.g. slices of ginger you can read a book through, often used as a garnish) - a task made much easier by an extremely sharp knife.

Learning how to sharpen your knife will go a lot farther than the type of knife you have!

Even hand made/custom sushi knives are < $200 (in Japan)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq_JmJLOqxo

(Like anything from Jacques Pepin, this is super useful).

Learning how to sharpen knives, and having all the equipment to do it, will almost certainly never pay off, except in intangible enjoyment.

> Learning how to sharpen knives, and having all the equipment to do it, will almost certainly never pay off, except in intangible enjoyment.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "pay off". In my experience, a sharp kitchen knife means I can cut faster and more safely.

As to cost, I use a $30 diamond stone[1]. Mine is more than 20 years old and it still works great. I love diamond because I can use it dry, so it really cuts down on sharpening time.

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1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004WFTW

Sharp knives make better food. Blunt knives squash rather than slice food, forcing out moisture and damaging texture. You can make a knife decently sharp with a $15 waterstone, a 10 minute YouTube video and a modicum of practice. In a world where Soylent and Huel exist, what is a kitchen for except intangible enjoyment?

I wasn't suggesting to have dull knives, only that it's economical and convenient to let a professional sharpen them for you.

>Funny thing this article doesn't really talk about REALLY expensive knives.

This one in the Wall Street Journal does:

"Why pay $24,000 for a kitchen knife?" — https://archive.is/5cyWJ

I have a single high-end kitchen knife, a Masakage Mizu gyuto. At under $200, it's not the height of bling, but still an order of magnitude above the cheapest thing that could possibly work. I bought it after handling almost everything in a shop specializing in Japanese knives, and I selected it largely based on its feel and balance.

It is much better at cutting things than any other kitchen knife I've used (yes, most were properly sharpened), though compared to German knives around $100, its advantage for me as a home cook is mostly that it feels good to cut with, not that I couldn't do all the same things with a cheaper, lower-performing knife. The difference in performance comes from the blade stock being thinner, the grind being convex instead of flat, and the blade being thinner immediately behind the sharpened edge.

There are downsides: the steel is not stainless, and being much harder than a typical German knife makes it prone to chip if it accidentally contacts something hard. Stainless options with similar characteristics exist, but it's widely believed that they can't get quite as sharp.

I was never much of a believer in knives until I lost some dexterity in my right hand and to keep from sticking my fingers under my old chef's knife I went down to a japanese knife shop and bought a knife so tall that I couldn't possibly stick my fingertip under the blade. I think it was about $200. It was and remains absurdly sharp. It is as sharp if I use it for three meals a day for a year as my Global was if I frequently and conscientiously honed it. It really makes a big difference if instead of crushing a sushi roll, you actually manage to cut it. I'm a believer now, just my own labor savings alone was worth the price. Was I supposed to not buy it just because it has a somewhat fancy appearance?

I'm not a knife guy and I'm not a foodie, but I did splurge on a knife made by the almazan kitchen guys on youtube - it's a knife but it's very tall. It's over twice as tall as a regular chef's knife but the same length, and I use it as a scraper, and to transfer bits across the kitchen to the stove, and just generally love the hand feel of it. I haven't been able to find this shape anywhere else. It's almost like a clever, but it's thin, has a nice rocking motion, and fits my hand perfectly. It's not even that great of a knife, it's hard to keep it super sharp, but it's still my favorite knife in the kitchen.

That sounds like a Chinese knife (often wrongly called cleaver - it's not meant for chopping).

https://www.seriouseats.com/2019/12/chinese-cleaver-kitchen-...

I've been using budget Victorinox for about 15 years, and they're still going strong. If you sharpen them regularly, use a steel, and don't do anything too crazy with them... Most modern knives will do an excellent job in the kitchen. The key is finding the ones that feel good in your hand, I think.

Plus one for the budget Victorinox. It's my daily workhorse.

I have a few of the victorianox lineup and they are great! I was told by numerous people that if you are not going to spend 250+ don't bother and get a victorianox.

I love the set I have.

I take issue with his characterization of wedding knives as bling. For many younger couples, they replace a collection of stamped knives and yard sale finds, so they are a qualitative upgrade. They often get used a lot, as families cook more than singles, so they are probably one of the more intensively used gifts.

Finally, they act as a commitment device and a symbol of being married - singles and unmarried people rarely have a matching knife set. Sort of like wedding rings, which aren't usually purchased for their own blinginess, but as a symbol.

Over the course of a 20000 day marriage, an extra 200$ isn't going to make much of a difference

I'm no culinary artist but I got a set of Kitchen Aid brushed stainless steel knives that have served us well. I love the built-in sharpener that comes as part of the wood block.

Not only do they look nice, but the fact that they have no separate material for the handles (they are 100% metal) means that they won't be breaking or getting stained and we can throw them in the dish washer if we want.

https://www.amazon.com/KitchenAid-KKFSS14BO-Classic-Brushed-...

FWIW, my wife and I cook a lot, and the best knives we've found so far are Victorinox knives from Amazon. These replaced a much more expensive set that would get dull within a week and was otherwise unremarkable. They are stainless, not too heavy, and they keep their edge really well. $85 for a set of 3, although I recommend getting their santoku as well. Touch them up with $10 Accursharp sharpener every now and then, and you can't really do much better. Although they certainly aren't a showpiece - just a practical, high quality knife set.

My favorite three kitchen knives are a stainless paring knife with a sheath they gave me for speaking at PyCon Argentina a few years ago, a cheap cubic zirconia paring knife I had to buy a diamond hone to resharpen after I dropped it and broke the tip off, and a scabby-looking French-style full-sized kitchen knife I found buried in the garden and resharpened with concrete and broken ceramic. It's a hardened carbon steel and holds an edge better than the stainless knife.

> full-sized kitchen knife I found buried in the garden

Um… Maybe my imagination is running away with me, but I struggle to find a sensible reason for burying a large knife in the garden.

I suspect the previous owner had a knife she didn't know how to sharpen and wanted to supplement the iron in the soil for the nasturtiums.

Or it was a murder weapon.

Seems a lot less likely. She's a well-known actress; I doubt she ever killed anyone, even in self-defense. There just aren't enough murders around here to make it a reasonable guess.

Yeah, don't think it's a given (and you have more context to determine that). It's just what comes to mind when hearing/reading about a buried knife (i.e. something you don't typically bury & could be evidence in a crime case).

I'm picturing someone using it as a utility for gardening, maybe cutting vines or chopping stems. Maybe a kid took it out to play in the garden. Then it was left there and forgotten as the grass and weeds grew over it over and over, until it was buried for someone to find.

While I definitely see the effects of that phenomenon, such as someone I know splurging on a beautiful Damascus steel knife. Then I read through to the bottom and turns out that I was just as much part of this phenomenon with my $100 Wusthof knife.

However, in defense of my claim that it's not just bling, it's my daily workhorse knife for cooking at home, and it's the only chef's knife I own. It sees more use than any other knife I own. That said, I definitely stake some claim of my identity in my choice of brand and the knife's appearance, so it's definitely not purely functional.

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