Be Excellent To Each Other

Are these cheap? bear in mind they're all Victorinox. (see pic).

I have a total of £35 shipped to spend and all I need is what's in the pic. The rest end up out in the garden with mum as I just don't use them for anything.

This can't end well.

Well I've got a 16cm chef knife at present that's also swiss. Nice it is. Thing is that's it. For the rest I am using a £4 Argos set that are all serrated. Sharp, mind, but rip the fuckin meat to bits when I remove the fat and small bones.

To be honest, if you spend £2 on a knife, you'll get a £2 knife.

And you definitely don't want to be using serrated knives for anything except bread.

Bizarrely enough, due to a washing up logistics error, I found a serrated knife worked quite well on tomatos.

It will work fine on anything that isn't fibrous, but it's still less than ideal.

Have set of these and a set of these.

Both are fookin fantastic.

Well yeah of course. Thing is mum is hard on knives. And fucks them using them for things they weren't intended for. So, that's why with these I shall order a roll and hide the fuckers..

I'm pretty much decided on these.. There's no point buying all sorts of shite I don't want or need tbh. Infact on double check Amazon want about the same for a three piece paring knife set. So it seems pretty good. (Pliss, I'll take a look at those cheers )

There are three relevant factors to a good knife:

1) How well they take an edge
2) How well they keep an edge
3) Comfort - handle and weight

A £2 knife is likely to fail badly on all three, but if it's what your budget allows, at least make sure you have some way of sharpening them, because #2 is likely to be their weakest point.

I do love threads asking for advice when the poster has clearly already made up his mind

Also: the best peeler I've ever used was an incredibly cheap one from Ikea. I've never had a good set of knives, and it's always the bane of my cooking.

Jesus fucking christ.

The cheap-ass knives I've used have often had a really wonky link between blade and handle - a couple of washes and the glue loosens and the blade wobbles and then you end up just chucking them out.

I haven't made up my mind as I haven't ordered anything yet. I just got out my mixmatch of knives and have been measuring them..

There's also another problem. I can't put anything in the kitchen and leave it there that doesn't match the colour scheme

I almost ordered a oddly named set of knives (Taylor's something eye or something) but the block was bright red. That's why I want a roll thinger so I can hide them. I mean fuck, you've seen my cupboards.. You don't even want to know what the drawers look like (go on Applepie you know you want to use that one ! )

I'm going by brand for the most part. I would not expect Victorinox to make shit knives. Also when I have more funs I shall invest in a Kyocera ceramic knife, but right now that costs as much as the entire selection on that site lol.

Squirt - that's what full tang is for mate.

Feex.

That's one reason I always buy one-piece knives.

BTW.. The mind made up thing... As I say it's not but it's hard to search for. If I put chef knives or chef knife set into either google or amazon and then sort price low to high I get about ten thousand fucking pages of shit that has nothing to do with what I am looking for. So it's really hard to sort the knives into order and then get what I am after.. I also don't need any other knives other than the ones I have listed. I don't do large butchery so I don't need a cleaver, I just buy cheaper yet amazing value cuts of meat (lamb's neck has been my recent 'one for all' meat - curries, roasts in mint gravy in the slow cooker and so on) and I use a smallish knife to remove the surface fat ETC. I also buy blade steaks and use the same sort of knife to remove the gristle running through it and also lamb chops and remove the bone from the middle.

I was buying lamb shanks but all of a sudden the prices have shot up and you pay by weight for a fucking massive bone (go on Apple, another one wide open for the taking) that you can't do anything with. Necks are identical in taste and texture and cost fuck all.

You don't need to spend a fortune and you probably only need two knives for most things you'll do. If you're going to look after them then I'd recommend spending a bit more but don't buy anything made out of too exotic a material as you'll have a problem keeping them sharp yourself.

So, blade should run right through the handle.
Blade should be decent quality steel so it can, as Cras says, be sharpened and stays sharp without the need to steel it every ten seconds.

Sharpening is a skill that can be easily learned and I would avoid buying any device that requires you drag the blade through it a perpendicular to the cutting edge as in my experience with the exception of one I found by Furitech (called Ozitech fingers I think) they all wreck the blade over a period of time.

It's pretty straightforward to find some diamond coated honing stones and some guides for keeping your knives sharp.

Good brands used in the professional chef community are

Henckels
Global
Sabatier
I O Shen

Yes, they're expensive but if looked after you'll never have to buy another knife again.

I'd be very wary of Sabatier - they whore out the name to loads of manufacturers of varying quality.

like these?

http://www.cooks-knives.co.uk/acatalog/ ... tml#aPP209

Quite possibly, yes. 7 knives for that price, and they're unlikely to be good quality.

Sets are rarely worth it for good quality knives. I have a half-decent set (although it's about 2 years overdue for sharpening) and half the knives I only use for piercing holes in the film on ready meals.

Solid one piece knives and a damn good sharpener. Sorted.

I did wonder that when I was looking. I just cribbed some names off a decent suppliers site
Hey, DoccyG has a friend who's a metallurgist and he makes knives as a hobby. Apparently they're awesome.

What???

I do and they are. But he only finishes one or two a year. So far, I've failed to convince him to make one for me.

http://yfrog.com/n65y8j (with glowing tritium inserts in the handle)
http://plixi.com/p/16215981
http://plixi.com/p/14256571
http://plixi.com/p/13590284

@Malabar: well played.

That's the ideal way of sharpening a knife. Bit pricey and takes up too much space, but boy can you get an edge on a knife with one of those
Still, you could always pop around and sharpen your wit knives on it

Just get the cheap knives John. And then only use them to cut vegetables, on a wooden chopping board. Don't use them for opening tins, cleaning your ears or digging the garden.

Then they'll last just about forever without sharpening, IME. Simples.

On the downside, you'll have some pretty boring dinners.

Well, if you don't clean them after your mum has finished fucking them, then you may benefit from the addition of a secret blend of herbs and spices.

You're wasted in accountancy. With that scatalogical wit and deadpan delivery you could be the next Frank Skinner. Seriously.

The knives I got in a sale at Debenhams are great. (too bloody sharp hence a few more scars).. £35 for £150 knives

Solid metal with forged handles (craster recommendations)...

Well I went for the ones I selected in the end. I just didn't need any others and the kitchen is too small to store stuff we don't need.

God I'm getting so sensible in my old age. I don't even go to car boot sales any more as I know I'll end up bringing home shit.

My knives came today. Jesus.Christ. They're sharp. So sharp infact that you can't just pull them from the sheaf they reside in without slicing the sheaf in half.

The peeler is absolutely awesome. Infact, it's the only peeler I have ever used that didn't end up tossed in the bin out of frustration. I'm going to order the rest of the knives I need next week (4 more) and that'll be all of them out of the way. Utterly awesome knives, recommend to any and all

Recommend them when you've been using them for six months and seen how well they keep their edge, rather than the day you got them.

Well they'll obs need sharpening before then. I need to get a decent sharpener. Any reccs?

I don't have a fucking clue what to use.. I need something idiot friendly and not something that can fuck up the blade if you don't have a degree in it.

It's not the sharpener, it's the knife. You can't sharpen cheap kitchen knives, don't even try it.

They weren't cheap knives they're Victorinox.

They were £2. They're cheap knives.

Your Mum is utterly awesome.

Like you could handle six months of my mum.

One of them was £2. A tiny wee paring knife. The fruit knife was a fiver and the chef knife was £15 or so.

According to what you posted on the previous page, it's 3 £2 knives and 1 £10 knife. They're cheap knives.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but they'll not take a second edge when they start getting blunt.

In terms you'll understand - you just bought a 486SX-25 to run Fallout New Vegas.

Well no I didn't spend £900 on a set of knives. That would have been pretty fucking daft really.

I bought a set of good knives (good to me). PC to me is a different matter entirely as I don't take it sort of seriously.

Let me rephrase it somewhat. I bought a really good set of knives in my terms. They kick the shit out of the £3.99 Argos set I was using.

So, you got ACER knives rather than ALIENWARE ones.

Have you benched them?

OK I can see where this is going. Thus, -

I just got a really shit set of chef's knives. Can some cunt please recommend me a sharpener THX M8s GR8

You can't sharpen shit knives.

HTH

That's for your willy pencil dick.

The main problem is that decent sharpeners will cost more than the knives you've just bought.

To do it properly you'll need either a wet stone or an oil stone which you can buy from pretty much any hardware store and they should be cheap"ish"

The best drag through sharpener I've used (and I haven't used them all obviously) is the one I mentioned earlier in the thread and it's made by ozitech. You're in luck, Amazon flog it and pretty much for cheaps as well.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keyw ... ibvv8uh7_b