The 12" chef knife, a humble plea | Hacker News Reader

The 12" chef knife, a humble plea

kellykozakandjoshdonald.substack.com

10 pointssurprisetalk24 comments

For people who hate cooking at home, the number one improvement to make it easier and more enjoyable is:

- Get a big new knife.

- Get a big wooden cutting board.

Too many people are suffering with a tiny kitchen knife or even an eating knife or bread knife, trying to cut their stuff on tiny plastic cutting boards. No wonder they hate cooking!

And you don't need an expensive kitchen knife, it just has to be big. All new knifes are sharp. When it's become dull after a year or two you can throw it away and get a new one, or get a better knife.

Edit: For all of you repeating "learn to sharpen" - that's nice, but if you deal with people in the real world, you know that they don't want to be bothered with sharpening their knives. It is better for them to get new knifes, rather than stick with dull knifes.

The best knife is also the one you will use. No need to be frugal with knifes, when a new knife costs less than the ingredients for your next meal.

Or learn to sharpen it. Cheap knives sharpen just fine and the stones cost just a few bucks.

Or the bottom of a coffee mug. Takes a bit of eyeballing to get it right the fist time, but sharpens up, good!

Yeah, I did that at an AirBnB (I think I learned of it from Kenji Lopez-Alt / Serious Eats). Not bad at all.

Or it's worth buying a decent power sharpener. One black friday I picked up a worksharp(1/2 in belt sharpener with jig) and it's right up there with the microwave and instantpot for being worth the money and space in the kitchen. A few times a year I sharpen every single non-serated knife in the kitchen (2 blocks) and it only takes like 5-10 minutes total. And yea having a few extra cheap chefs knives lets me push it to 6 months or so till I start running out of sharp chefs knives.

You don't have to throw a chef's knife away when it becomes dull, you just sharpen it.

At first I was trying to figure out why the parent comment was getting downvoted, then I read the last line. Yeesh, ya, you don't need to "learn" to sharpen, just get one of those pull-throughs. They is a minuscule learning curve with with it. It doesn't do the best sharpening job but as a particularly YouTuber once said: "The best sharpener is the one you will use."

People don't want to do it and they don't want to learn to do it. It's easier for them to buy a new knife. They're not expensive. Maybe keep the old one for garage stuff and gardening.

I have one of these for travel: https://store.177milkstreet.com/products/suehiro-for-milk-st...

All you have to do is run the knife through it a few times for a decent sharpen. No power, no effort, no skill required.

A new knife might not be expensive, but it's a new thing that has to be produced, and packaged, and shipped, and stored, and so on. Just keep your old stuff in shape, people.

Am I alone in my preference for an 8" knife?

You are not alone. There are people who prefer medium sized knives.

I like a 3", 5", 8", and 12" in my stable.

Different knives for different things. It's not hard to chop more onions or apples than comfortably fit under an 8" knife. If that happens you either need to work in batches or use a longer knife like the monster in the article.

If you're going through 10+lbs of veggies every night, the longer knife starts to make more sense. Still seems unnecessary for home cooking though.

Even buying a big cheap knife is miles better. When I was a student I just kept buying a new one every 3 months (they are <€20) and kept the old one until I felt bored enough to use my whetstones. Worked good enough

And

- learn to sharpen it

The place where I bought my knife offered a sharpening class and sold stones. It’s meditative to sharpen, keeps your knife in good condition (vs mechanized commercial sharpeners) and saves money (vs outsourcing it). But I don’t see these classes offered much. There are good tutorials on YouTube, if that works for you.

I’ll also say, “big” is not so important past a certain point. I have a 10 and am generally very happy with it but you do need to clear more space /above/ your cutting board the longer your blade is.

And if someone is buying their first chefs knife they generally (as you correctly note!) will want a larger cutting board than they likely have now. So having a super sized blade (vs a more reasonable 8) amplifies the extent you will need to learn to tidy up and clear space before and while prepping (chopping).

> For all of you repeating "learn to sharpen" - that's nice, but if you deal with people in the real world, you know that they don't want to be bothered with sharpening their knives. It is better for them to get new knifes, rather than stick with dull knifes.

There's almost certainly a business in your town (regardless of where you live) that will sharpen your knives for you. The one near me charges $1 per knife. Surely that's cheaper than buying a new one, not to mention less wasteful.

I wouldn't be so certain that knife sharpeners are that common. But I also take mine to a sharpener every once in a while, and it's cheap.

For most people it's probably too much of a hassle unless they have expensive knifes. Easy to pick up a new knife when you're at the department store, and keep the old knife for yard stuff.

One more thing for first time knife buyers: If you're going to chop a lot of onions, get a knife with a thin blade. If you're going to cut a lot of stakes, get a thick blade.

I had a friend a long time ago who was a Le Cordon Bleu trained chef (was no longer a professional chef though). A couple of things he said to me stuck with me for years.

"You should have a good knife but cheap pots and pans that are heavy enough to kill someone with" and also the story about all of the students at the school stealing each other's expensive knives.

I have a 12" Global knife, and >95% of what I use it for is cutting up watermelon.

In my defense: my family loves watermelon, we eat a ton of it, and I'm happy to have a special "Watermelon Knife".

That's a big knife. A bit scary. My brain says it's bigger than 12".

Do you watch a lot of porn?

That's not 12". More like 14.

Could be a very little person.

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