The thin Santoku works well as a Chef’s knife for dicing but can butcher too. Good all purpose knife. Amazingly the $7 Asian knife is by far my sharpest and de-bones and fillets well. Doubles as cheese-knife. A real work-horse.
I keep them all sharp with an Aluminum oxide stone
What do you have? How about an ideal knife/brand? One that you’d leave to your kids in the will…
I have an eight piece Wusthof Classic set that I’ve added to over the years. Last addition was a 6" Cooks Knife which gets a lot of use. I’d like to add a santoku which will fill the last slot in the block I’ve got and then I think I’ll consider my set complete. Also have an eight piece set of Henckles steak knives.
I have an array of cheap knives…two Walmart santokus that are dull as butter knives (don’t really use them), and a decent small utility knife, then three forschner beauties…a 12" slicing knife, a 4" utility knife, and an 8" chef’s knife. Those last two are my standbys.
i have more knives than i can use. we have a complete set of cutco knives but we host a foreign exchange student from solingen germany every year. they always bring knives from wusthof and robert herder rostfrel every year (those are my favorites)
Winner of ATK tests and what their chefs use…Forschner/Victorinox Fibrox 8" Chef’s knife. It’s only $25 and it ROCKS! Same thing with their $6 6 inch paring knife!
Forschners are great, but I have to admit that I did pay a bit extra for rosewood handles on mine! I dunno, not as ergonomic or easy to clean as the fibrox version but I love rosewood! My last bass build had a laminate rosewood top.
We have a mishmash of all kinds of stuff, much of it without a brand name. We have two Henckels Zwilling Twin Grip knives which were closeouts and have very thin blades.
My wife was using the chef’s knife about a month ago and while cutting green onion caught the corner of her left index finger cutting through the nail and the skin and the pulp and essentially amputated a cleanly cut chunk out of the corner of her finger. Since there was no blood supply to reattach the excised piece and no flap to stitch we had to go get the angled edge chemically cauterized to stop the bleeding. As far as knives go, I’m thinking on which will shear through the nail and pulp and skin on a finger is good for everyday cooking tasks ;)
Within 5 min. of opening the aforementioned Forschner chef’s knife, I’d taken off the end of my left thumb with virtually no pressure on the knife. I’d never had a knife that sharp before.
I don’t know if it is high end or not. I like them better than the wusthof the kids have brought. they are not stainless, just very sharp steel but they need good care since they are not stainless. I have never seen them in the USA and if not for our solingen guests would not have them.
Rostfrei literaly translates to “Rust Free”. It is stainless steel.
So if it will rust, it could be a low grade of stainless, or a special blade from a company that is named Rostfrei.
Is it this company? I was not familiar with that one. Wife has Henkels Profi S. http://www.rsg-solingen.de/d/index.php
the knives are made by robert herder in solingen. it must be a rust free version of their thin carbon steel blade. who knows, but they are sharp and stay that way.
So looking around I see that this company does make carbon steel knives. High carbon steel can be very sharp and will hold the edge. Can rust like you say. http://www.herdermes.be/en/enkk01.htm
