The Answers: Knife

I'll level with you: I do not like Mark Bittman.

To be clear, lest the harpies of the Interweb should come swooping down upon my soul, I respect Bittman but I do not love him.

He's a smug boomer and thus rubs me wrong on an atomic level. It's not his fault. Who's fault is it? James Taylor, Alice Waters, Dennis Hopper and Steven Spielberg. All the people who did one or two cool things when doing cool things was still pretty easy and then coasted for decades with a wry smirk on their faces.

Mark is not guilty of those sins, except the smirk. His cookbooks are perfect for cooks who like to skim recipes for basic ideas and are broad enough that you're likely to stumble upon something you haven't thought of cooking before; most restaurants have a copy of one of them kicking around, covered in grease. His TV show is usually both interesting and entertaining and, most importantly, he wrote the best article of 2007 in the NYT's normally snore-worthy food section.

For those of you that don't remember: in May last year he wrote a long article about equipping a home kitchen to cook almost anything for under $300. This article was so smart, complete and anti-precious that it was singularly responsible for me reading the Dining Out section for the next ten months despite the fact that I rarely found anything I wanted to see (a brief aside: The NYTFS is, 8 out of 10 times, not written for people who are interested in food. It's written as straight up lifestyle-porn. No big deal, I've quit expecting anything worthwhile out of it and am thus pleasantly surprised when they put out a meaty article.).

Anyway, as a Homage to/Rip-off of Mr. Bittman's single handed attempt to keep me skimming every Wednesday's paper for something of weight I have decided to kick off the Answers. Today I'm starting with my favorite kitchen object: the chef knife.

Over the last two years I have talked a lot of shit about kitchen knives none of which was totally correct. What can I say? In the last four years I went from cutting food with a knife our Dominican neighbor lady gave us in pity to having a $1500 knife collection and helping design a chef knife for production. Hopefully, in penance, I'll be able to right those wrongs and shed a little light and sanity on the most deeply fetishized kitchen appurtenances.


What are you after and what do you want to spend?

These are the questions you must answer before you even pull you WaMu gold card out of your money clip. You'll need to take a cold and unflinching look into the nature of your heart. Are you buying a knife to mince shallots or are you looking to consume, collect, and seem special? Either or both are fine. Just know what you're getting into.

Selling Plasma to buy Beer

First we'll cover knives for the really cheap seats. You know who you are: rolling cigarettes out of cans of Top and buying your veg at the end of the day from farmers who would rather give shit away than load it back on the truck.

First you need to decide: carbon or stainless? Carbon will be sharper but can and will stain or even rust, stainless at this level will not be quite as sharp but do the job well and will not require the knife to be washed and immediately wiped dry like carbon.

Single, male and on the Autism spectrum? Carbon steel.

Overworked, underpaid and not have time to pamper yourself, let alone a knife? Stainless.

So what should you get for $20 or under?

For stainless a Forschner 8" Fibrox, beloved of the Cooks Illustrated people and also the same knife maker of all the knives in my butchering kit. They're tough, easy to sharpen, cheap and ugly. You can get them most anywhere including the usual suspects of drunken, late nite online purchases. This knife will not get you laid or make you look cool but will do anything short of carving a giant Russian squash.

Carbon? That pretty much assigns you to a trip to Chinatown to get a carbon steel veggie cleaver or get one from Wok Shop or Galasource. These cleavers, as stated in previous reviews, will make short work of chopping onions, mashing garlic cloves and hacking apart large woody pumpkins and make you look like a disco pimp while doing it... so long as you don't cut off your fingernail.

First Real Job after College

So you have more than twenty bones to blow on a cutting object? Swell. What does that mean? I would guess say $50- $120. Here in fifty-to-buck twenty land the world is your oyster. You can get some very good knives. Here I'm going to recommend you stay Japanese. My personal favorite is the Mac Dave Gould special Mac's MTH-80.

As much shit as I talk about vintage carbon steel and Chinese cleavers this is the knife I have rarely put down since trading Dave a fancy Japanese chicken knife for it two years ago. It's size, balance and edge holding capabilities are unlike any knife I have felt like I could use every waking moment and not fuck up. Yes this is a tough knife. I'm not saying you can't destroy it (I've seen a line cook that will remain nameless destroy one in a matter of seconds) but you'd be hard pressed to do it outside a restaurant kitchen.

Still feeling Carbon-core? The best for the money are Kikuichi carbon steel Gyutos you can get at Marlow and Sons or Brooklyn Kitchen. Actually my MTH-80 is finally dull from a spate of drunken meat slicing in a ceramic plate during my last BBQ and my trusty, patina coated Kikuichi is picking up the slack. You watch the Cooking with Lydia show? Look next time, she uses the exact same knife. That said you will need to sharpen this knife and all carbon steel more often than most stainless.

I'm Rich Biatch!


So you've finally made it huh? You methodically slice chive batons in your brownstone's custom kitchen complete with a six burner Wolf stove and a decorative cast concrete island? I think you should go custom. I'm newly in love with Joel from Cut Brooklyn and his crazy handmade chef knives. Every knife gets about 10 hours of hand work into them and they are as sharp or sharper than even the highest-end Japanese knives I've handled. Want more? He'll even sharpen them back to their original edge for free if you live in the city and can drop them by his shop. Find anyone else that can or will do that. On top of that Joel uses newer alloy, ultra-tough steel that keeps it's edge longer provided you don't do anything too dumb to it.

Too new looking for your steampunk ass? Try your hand at some vintage Sabatiers. The ones in the picture at the top of the post are my personal collection of expensive and hard to find French steel. Top to bottom they are a Four-Star Elephant Sabatier Nogent 11" an unmarked 12" (probably a Trompette or Elephant from the 50's) Sabatier and a cleaver-spined Massiff Nogent from Tichet. These are not for everyone. They require constant steeling and are heavier by twice of any of my other normal sized knives. They do however give you a knife you would feel OK about using in hand-to-hand combat or splitting a live lobster.

Final note: Just because I recommend these knives they are not the be-all/end-all of knives. There are more good knives out there than ever before. That said cheap Chinese import copies have also flooded the industry with a lot of total crapola. If all your budget will afford is a $10 Bittman-special Dexter with a white plastic handle then fine. If you want to spend $10K of a hand welded mini Samurai? Bully for you my man. Just remember that the most important thing is to learn how to use your knife well and, most importantly, keep it sharp! Sharp! Sharp! Which, conveniently, will be the subject of the next post so stay tuned.

p.s. If you have a favorite knife please write in and let us know.