/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>6872564

You should do a little research before asking questions.

Are your knife skills up to snuff?

Do you cook often enough to not balk at a $120-180 purchase?

Do you think you can follow through with proper basic maintenance to keep it sharp enough to make it a worthwhile investment?

If you want a good knife, buy it. Just make sure it's a purchase you want and do some research before settling on a single one

>>6872564
If you sharpen your own knives, then there's only two other considerations: material and aesthetic.

A knife might have a different steel, which involves tradeoffs between corrosion, brittleness, edge retention, and money. In this, I haven't tested, but I'd be surprised if nice knives aren't generally better.

There's also high carbon steel knives, which will rust very easily, but stays sharper longer.

I'd say maybe even the more important consideration is the feel. I guess I said aesthetics, and that too, but really the balance, weight, curvature, length, way the blade joins with the handle, etc. all really matter to me. For instance, my Victorinox Fibrox chef's knife has a highly concave area between the blade and the handle that's annoying to dry. My nicer Misono UX10 Gyuto has a beveled metal top part on the handle, which is a lot easier to dry. It feels good to hold, and I like the blade curvature and the asymmetrically beveled blade edge (though I could re-do the edge of my Victorinox I guess).

Honestly, for a tool that I use almost every day, the fact that it looks badass matters to me too. What's $200 over the next...I dunno, decade?

>>6872622
>only two other considerations
besides price, I mean.

>>6872622
>>6872564
Oh, and duh, also the blades are different thicknesses. Thinner blades might give you more control for doing precise / thin cuts, at the cost of being more easily chipped (for the same material).

/ck/ likes to shoot down popular shit, like every other board, but I've been using my G2 close to as long as /ck/ has existed, and I still stand behind it

It's a solid blade which holds it's edge, and for $100 the only cons are the look and the feel.

Ignore anyone who says the handle gets slippery. That's blatantly false.

It's really well balanced, but it does feel more like a razor blade than a sword. In other words, it's made for smaller hands, or for anons who like a lighter touch...

In any case, do some research on what rates well in your price range and then go out and try them. Price and reviews is the best starting point, but it will always come down to what feels good in your hand.

>i've brought my g2 into multiple restaurants and have never gotten anything but positive feedback, btw

>>6872653
>i've brought my g2 into multiple restaurants
Are you a chef?

>>6872663
>>6872653
I'm interested because I've got an excess of cash and a need for a larger saucepan / saucier pan and am wondering how big a difference copper actually makes vs. stainless steel / stainless steel + aluminum in terms of sauces.

I've read that copper is great for responsiveness, if not more even heating, which sounds really nice. I'm thinking when browning butter, or anything you want to take off the heat pretty fast, and want to continue for as long as possible.

I've never cooked with copper, though, so I don't really know.

Overpriced shit. I've been using a cheap steel knife and a cheap ceramic knife for everything for years now. Investment: under $20 both.

>>6872680
Have you used a more expensive one to compare?

>>6872564
Absolutely not, I bought this set a few years back and haven't looked back. They don't rust, they rarely need to be sharpened, and they slice through anything with ease. In fact, why don't you get in touch with me, I can give you a demonstration of them, you'd be surprised but you're actually putting yourself at risk by using dull knives.

>>6872564
>Are expensive cooking knives overrated?

Yes. At $5-10 a piece I could afford to throw these IKEA knives out and buy new ones if they ever got dull. Or I could just touch them up with a $3 Amazon sharpener every month or so.

>>6872798
Dude, if a $200 knife (which is high) lasted five years (which is low), that's $40 / year, or about...$3/month.

>>6872807
>only reading half the post

>>6872663
i'm using my g2 at work and i have to fiercely defend it against my colleagues.

just expensive for the sake of being impractically expensive? forget that shit. definitely overrated and only for hobbyists that can appreciate quality steel and faggots with too much money.

but a decent quality knife can make a world of difference to some people. for most other people, it really won't matter. your level of skill should, of course, match the tool. so if you're a casual home cook that just needs to get the job done so you can make your next experimental instant ramen cocktail, then by all means get a budget knife that won't shatter when you slice through those thick cuts of dehydrated noodle bricks.

>>6872622
$200 is more than most people on this board have had at one time in their entire lives
>>6872653
never been a fan of global handles but the haters are just hating because they think it makes them sound knowledgeable about knives
>>6872564
any time you ask "is expensive X overrated" people will trot out the following scenario which doesn't apply in real life:
>should I buy two buck cuck for three bucks, or a 1947 petrus? there is no possible alternative and you only have these two choices. the two buck cuck will be served in an honest hard working libby jar, and the petrus will be served in an overpriced hipster zalto glass. also I will have to mortgage my house to get the petrus. is the petrus really overrated, or is expensive wine worth the extra cash? I saw on penn and teller once how a wine snob got confused after being waterboarded for 20 minutes and then lied to about what he was being given to drink, and wine snobs prefer petrus.
anyway there is no possible alternative between ikea knives and resurrecting a dead bizen smith via DNA cloning to hand-forge a custom made tamahagane gyuto. buy the ikea knife.

I found my current knives in the basement of my house when I moved in. Part of me wonders if I'm cooking with murder weapons, but I've had them for about 15 years and they're still good, even if the utility knife is starting to look more like a filetting one.

>>6873221
Murder weapons are great for fileting red meat, its like they move on their own.
Source: A friend

>>6872680
Same
>>6872683
No, never felt the need to, mine does exactly what I want

>>6873313

>vehemently defends his stance on something which he has no frame of reference

you're a fucking moron. a stubborn, stupid moron. what you've just said is the same as saying there's no point in buying an expensive/well made car because your beater gets you from point A to point B.

>>6874311

>the same as saying there's no point in buying an expensive/well made car because your beater gets you from point a to point b

While I'm 100% behind your point, that's actually a really terrible analogy.

>>6872688
lol.
Cutco knives are a ripoff, but I'd say if you get them at %50 off they're worth it.

wtf happened to my post?

>>6872564
>Are expensive cooking knives overrated?

They -can- be overrated.
As with all tools, the worth of an knife has a lot to do with how often you use it, what features of the knife you enjoy, how long it lasts, and how you think the knife looks.

You can actually increase the value of some cheaper knives by making slight modifications: for example most knives under $300 don't have rounded spine or choil. You can do this quite easily yourself to make the knife more comfortable to hold for extended periods.

But then there are some knives that are unjustifiable in price, and only cost that much because they are seen as works of art in demand (I'm talking about $5000 kitchen knives here, pic related).

It wouldn't be worth getting an expensive knife if you use it for only a couple of hours every week... UNLESS you have extra money to burn and/or really appreciate a good knife.

Just bought a Wusthof IKON classic set. Love it.

>>6872585

>>6874455
In what way?

>>6872622
Material
Aesthetic
Comfort
Price

I am not a fucking scientist or anything, but I can say that all of the more expensive knives I have used have been much, much more pleasant to work with than all of the cheaper knives I have used. Much of this is probably related to knife maintenance (since I maintain my knives and most people with shit setups do not), but I also prefer the comfort/handling of mine. I also find a lot of cheap knives with curved blades have profiles that aren't as easy to work with (straight knives obviously are all fine).

As with everything though there is a point where knives stop being expensive because they are good and start being expensive because they are expensive.

>>6872564
The big one in pic cost 5 times as much as the smaller one, and I only use the smaller one in the kitchen. Big one is for carving and showing off only.

Point is, expensive =/= good all the time, it's more about what you need it for, how much you'll use it and if you can maintain it

>>6877351
>that brick of a bolster on the sab
this is why we don't buy modern sabatier, kids

I own a set of Wusthof Ikon knives. All in all they cost about $500 but it was a great investment for me seeing as I cook every day at least twice and I'm pretty good at using knives. You absolutely pay for quality, higher quality knives will take an edge easier, keep the edge longer, and have a sharper edge in general.

That said, unless you can really afford it, there's no real reason to pay that much for knives. While I wouldn't say "go out and buy Walmart knives because they're the same as Wusthof", even a moderately priced set of knives ($60-$100) will last you a long time as long as you keep them sharpened and cleaned.

>>6877377
>owns wusthof
>purchased in an actual set
your opinion on knives is irrelevant

>>6872812
>i'm using my g2 at work and i have to fiercely defend it against my colleagues.

some people can be real cunts

used to work in a meat market. would keep my knives sharp, and everyone had their own hanger. we had one lazy piece of shit who would grab anyone's knife that was sharp because he was too lazy to keep his own sharp. i even tried showing him how to sharpen his. he was just a lazy fuckwad. finally had to start taking my knives home

everybody else understood. there's some things you don't touch without permission. you don't touch another man's tools.

>>6872812
This guy is in an anime

>>6877358
I kinda like it. Keeps its edge well, easy to maintain, had it for 4 years and there's very little wear/tear. Does its job well.

>>6877380
It's cheaper to purchase them in a set fag. Contrary to what you may believe, liking things that are popular won't make you cool. Wusthof Ikon is also the brand of knives Ramsay uses at home. Which doesn't make them good but I like them a lot more than any other knife I've used.


I'm sorry that you're too poor to afford nice things so you feel the need to shitpost about them

>>6877410
>the Macy's salesman told me that Gordon Ramsay uses these knives
ahahahahahah oh wow
>if you aren't completely clueless about buying cooking equipment it means you're poor
sure that must be it. do you own a bose HTIB by any chance?