This guy’s opinion on knives is probably worth considering. The problem is, he’s using a $65 knife to produce Michelin-starred cuisine. Dying to see one of you guys fabricating eel with an $800 knife in real time – bip, bang, served . Four finger cots later and mangled product…??? All signs point to “yes.”
REJOICE! You don’t have to spend a fortune on gear to make great food!
When we do a tour before lending in or buying an equity stake, if there are a bunch of prima donnas whose knife bags would cover two month’s rent on a nice place in the West Village we politely decline. Not dealing with that kind ego and misplaced priorities.
I’ll take a guy with a $20 knife but who knows product any day of the week. Takes me two seconds to hand him a better knife. We have boxes of them. Takes years to impart product knowledge and how to work it.
I think what Charlie is trying to say is that he finds the focus some of us have on kitchen gear and kitchen knives is kind of ridiculous, when a Michelin star chef can prepare his Michelin star food using very affordable regular knives.
Charlie probably find the time some of us spend on discussing blade types and steel quality in kitchen knives a waste of time, when the more important thing is to be able to cook quality food day in and day out.
It doesn’t make you a lousy cook if you care about kitchen knives and steel types, but I think Charlie finds the attention to what kitchen knife we use a bit of a waste of time, when the important thing is the food we prepare with the knife and the food we can make using the ingredients we have prepped.
Using top ingredients is always more important than using high end kitchen gear.
These things are true of many hobbies. If you can play like Jeff Beck, you are able to play great music on an Epiphone. If you are a lesser guitarist, a vintage Les Paul is a joy, but it doesn’t make you Jeff Beck. Playing with generic clubs, I am pretty sure Scotty Scheffler or Xander Schauffle can beat me by a mile, even if I am playing the latest and greatest, but I might still enjoy those high dollar sticks. A super car will not make me Mario Andretti, but it might still be fun.
I know I’ll never be Marco Pierre White, but a snazzy knife or a heavy tinned copper pan would still be fun. Fortunately for cookware geeks, these indulgences are way cheaper than vintage guitars, $500 putters and drivers, or Ferraris. A fairly incredible knife can be had for the price of the ingredients of one great meal. A Dexter can do the same job for the price of the appetizers, but for a cookware geek, it won’t be as much fun.
At some point, we just need to realize that it is simply people own choice to buy what they want as long as they are not hurting people. Everyone priority is different. Personally, I think buying the latest and most powerful smartphone is low on my list, as I find more utility and joy to spend money elsewhere.
However, everyone has their own priority. It is their own choice – as long as they are not hurting me, hunting others and hunting themselves (yes, if they spend every cent to buy the latest iPhone and not able to pay rent, then maybe it is time to say something as a friend). If your friend wants to save up his money toward the next iPhone instead of getting some nice A5 Wagyu beef, is it really a problem?
I think just a year ago I was talking to a friend of mine about the $100+ Shizuoka Crown melon. She thinks it is just a waste of money and she would spend the extra $100+ to get some ginsengs. Yet, I am sure someone out there will think the extra $100+ ginseng is not the best way to spend the money.
I totally agree - I still want to cook with the best kitchen gear I can get my hands on and it probably won’t affect my cooking more than 2-4% in the positive direction.
I just reflected on Charlie’s comment and think this is how he see things.
I love my kitchen knives and my copper pans and 7-PLY pans.
Could I make as great food using cheap shitty pans ?
Probably, but not 100% sure. I’m not a pro chef, just a solid pretty good amateur cook.
I honestly think the range of cookware I own at home does make me a better cook overall than if I had to cook in only 4-5 pans total.
A pro chef can probably produce equally great food whether he uses crappy pans or very high end expensive pans.
However If I use a cheap Victorinox or a very expensive high end R2/SG2 Japanese Wa handle knife with a thin laser like edge, I’ll be able to cook equally great food
Knives are a far less important factor when it comes to cooking performance than the stovetop or the cookware is in my view.
I have nothing against people using expensive kitchen knives, if they find joy in that.
But where I tend to shake my head is when you hear some of these knife geeks complaint about the balance in a for instance a Miyabi SG2 production knife and complaining about how the balance in the knife is completely off so they have a problem using the knife. This is what I call a perfect case of useless pointless snobbery.
I just don’t buy the whole “expensive knives are snobbery” or expensive pans or cooktops or whatever example you wanna pick.
The guy who chose to buy a 300 USD knife might also be the guy who rides a bike to work instead of driving a car. People usually prioritize there spending of money the way they feel is the best value for them.
And no. The food I put out in my little home kitchen doesn’t get better because of the knife I use. But it sure makes it funnier for me to make that food. That is something I’m willing to spend money on.
Woo-hoo! Hey, @hungryonion Admins! You can now shutter the “Cookware” forum!
One grumpy guy has deemed everyone’s equipment interests moot!
Why is grumpy guy complaining in this Forum, rather than posting positive tips and encouragement in the “Cooking, Cookbooks, Recipes and Ingredients” Forum? Nobody knows!
While this may be true, it is good to be reminded that our passion for cooking knives is just that, a passion, but someone who either chooses not to indulge that passion or cannot afford to can still make great food. I personally believe, however, that there is cookware so crappy it gets in the way of making certain kinds of great food. I would hope that anyone who had one of your knives would get a rush every time they cooked, work at keeping a perfect edge, and honor the knife with beautifully prepared wonderful ingredients. Having knives and cookware I love gives me such a rush, heightened by the challenge of great dishes. Tasks that might seem mundane, even drudgery, like prepping lots of vegetables with specific cuts, is a delight. Of course I am not working under pressure, temporal, financial, consistency, or any other kind. The lovely knife makes it fun even for something as humdrum as mirepoix. However, putting a great edge on a Dexter can yield a similar thrill. That is what I love about our shared passion. Our knives get used. It is at the intersection of ingredients, tools, and senses where cooking is most fulfilling.
It really does. As a professional chef who saw this happen and had my prep cooks ask me to sharpen their knives all the time, it was proven time and again.
Well, as a bladesmith and meat processing plant worker, I can attest it doesn’t.
There’s an abundance of good, inexpensive lines of knives. I suppose one could source a bad cheap knife, but it’d be hard to do with a world full of Victorinox, Forschner, Dexter-Russell, Mercer, F. Dick, MAC, Kiwi, Kai, etc. Even Winco and Thunder Group knives aren’t bad.
Yeah. If you use the knives they go dull. I worked in professional kitchens for a quarter century and worked with multiple custom knifemakers over the years and learned a lot from them. Sure a knife is a tool and a well maintained knife can be a useful tool-- even a cheap one. But the materials and construction on a “good knife” are incomparable. The notion that it doesn’t matter what you use at all because it will perform the same is absurd. It doesn’t mean you NEED a high end knife, but in a professional cooks hands, a $30 Forschner won’t be getting handed down to your children like a well maintained knife made with high quality materials. It’s actually laughable to suggest otherwise.
My guess is that there’s about 1000 percent more chopping and other tasks being done by those prep cooks and not just slicing and trimming. That wear and tear matters. But, honestly, I pretty much don’t care about this forum anymore because the conversation is always so unpleasant on every subject.
