Your own choice really. A Chinese thin blade slicer or a medium blade vegetable knife are good as main knife. I try not to call them as cleavers because it can be confusing. The shortcoming of a Chinese style knife is that its “tip” is far from handle and more square-like than a pointy tip. It still works, but not as well as a Western Chef’s knife.
So if you go with a Chinese style chef knife, then more important to get a paring knife fill this “gap”
so I just did a bunch of chopping/mincing with our cheap knife set. As I think I mentioned , I just use the chef’s knife. I always thought it odd the set included two chef’s knives of the same length, so I decided to take a close look at the knives and it turns out my favorite knife is not part of the original set and is, in fact, an old victorinox fibrox! who knows where it came from, has to be at least 15 years old.
I do like the knife but think there’s something more out there for me. Still, it’s nice to know that I’d be relatively happy with another victorinox.
well yes, that’s the plan. I’ll bring all our knives to the bungalow and keep one good knife in our apt.
here’s what I like it about the chinese knife: All the chopping is done from above so my hand never gets near the blade! and of course, thinking ahead to the coming zombie apocalypse, would you rather have a fussy chef’s knife or a badass cleaver?
If you like a Chinese style knife, then I think your link to CCK knives are great. These are professional kitchen knives. They are a bit better than the shiny inexpensive Chinese knives you find in Asian supermarkets and not as expensive as some custom made knives.
For home use, my recommendation is the CCK KF191X series. Stainless steel, thin blade. KF181X series is stainless steel blade and stainless steel handle. I personally like wood handles.
For medium blades (a bit more well rounded, but also less high performance), then go for the KF190X series and KF180X.
For me, that wouldn’t work for paring veg or boning proteins. If I had to pick just one it would be a santoku, but I will be re-thinking my chef knives since reading this thread. Thanks!
My knife block has nine knives in it (including a cleaver). If I had to narrow it down to the absolute necessities, they would be:
8" Chef’s
8" Bread
5-6" Flexible Boning
3" Pairing
With the exception of the boning knife, I use the above almost every day… and since none of them will do the job of the Flexible Boning knife (like prepping seafood), I consider it a necessity as well.
I agree with the idea that “too sharp” is a nothing in everyday usage. No such thing as too sharp.
Problems arise when one gets used to dull knives and then gets sideswiped by a really sharp one. So I think it’s best to have really sharp, but if people not up to keeping it that way might cut themselves less with a duller knife (and avoiding things like classically small-dicing an onion, or trying to use a straight edge to cut a ripe tomato).
My grandmother had a drawer full of mongrel knives that she had picked up at yard sales. Not a one of them could cut anything toughwe than softened butter and she refused to let anyone near them with a stone.
So I cut myself every damned time I cooked at her house.
I have a magnet rack full of Wusthofs, but my roommate bought a Misen to see if it lived up to the hype. Its crazy sharp, lightweight, and comfortable to use…and under $100 for the 8" chef.
I could live with just my nakiri (inexpensive, recommended a while back by Tim Irvine), a paring knife, and something serrated for bread. I rarely cut up meat and never hack through bones.
My Misen is my second favorite after the Global.
I bought a cheap but heavy cleaver ages ago. It seemed like a good idea at the time but early on, when dismantling a chicken, I brought the blade down forcibly but not sufficiently vertically. It veered to one side and nearly slid into my other hand, which was holding the bird down onto the cutting board. Crisis averted, but since then I have never whacked with it and if all you’re doing with a cleaver is slicing, you can use a chef’s knife.
I notice that Jacques Pepin, who has over 7 decades of experience, often uses a knife that’s like an oversized paring knife. Longer blade, proportionate to its handle, but shorter and thinner than a chef’s knife. I have no idea what it’s called.
Personally, I reach for a santoku more often than a chef’s knife.
I’ve got an 8" Henckel chef’s knife that I bought as part of a set when I moved out of my mom’s house in 1996. As far as I can tell, it is stamped metal, light weight with a fairly durable plastic handle. It is probably the knife I return to again and again. Between that and my poultry shears, I can break down just about anything we tend to eat here. I have a pairing knife from the same set that sees occasional use.
I also have a 7" Wustof chef’s knife, that is somewhat heavier that I also use a fair bit. I agree with the advice you’ve received about going to a place you can actually feel the knife in your hand. If you get home and it feels awkward in your hand, you’re probably not going to use it.
No such thing as “scary sharp”. Besides, if you do cut yourself with a very sharp knife it will heal much more quickly than if you cut yourself with a not-so-sharp knife. I could not do with just one knife though the Santoku is the knife I use most often. I spent some time at Sur la Table trying various ones and found that I need the heft of a Henckels Pro to be comfortable. A sharp bread knife is essential along with the cheap paring knives that are near and dear to my heart. IMO it’s well worth going to a restaurant supply or cookware shop and trying them on “for size”.
I’m guessing you’ve perused the many knife enthusiast threads addressing similar questions already, or that those folks will be here with heavy duty advice if they aren’t already.
But here’s my 2c anyway as a non-knife aficionado / heavy home user. I used Global knives extensively over the pandemic; my favorite is the shorter (5.5”?) santoku (fits my hand better than the big one, though I like that too). My brother, on the other hand, favors the large chef’s knife — bigger hand, different weighting.
I added to his (extensive, half-hidden from casual / uncaring / destructive users 
) collection an inexpensive Mercer offset bread knife and Victorinox Fibrox filleting knife (which have both survived multiple culls since).
Iirc Sur la table and Williams sonoma both carry Global if you want to hold the knives and figure out which one feels right. Apparently they also go on sale on Gilt and Rue la la regularly (a friend who has only had really crappy, dull knives in all the many years I’ve known and cooked with her suddenly upgraded to Global thanks to one of those sales, and I was really afraid for the safety of her digits for months after 
).
It is called a petty knife by many. Sabatier just labels it a 6" chef’s knife. It is great for small to medium jobs but really not up to breaking down or slicing large cuts. My wife and daughter use ours a good bit. I use it mainly for pitting and slicing avocados.
A nakiri is extremely versatile, essentially a vegetable cleaver with less blade height. Mine has been passed on to my brother in law with a gyuto and a petty. He had no good knives, and I had too many. I also just gave my heavy meat cleaver to my son in law. I have already benefited from that in the form of beef cheek barbacoa tacos!
I have 16 knives, mostly carbon steel I inherited from my father- in- law and an older stainless steel set from Japan. The knife I use every day is a small ss cleaver. I don’t know if I could manage without the other knives but I probably use the cleaver 90% of the time.
I’m no knife nerd, but I do appreciate a good, sharp knife. I can do nearly everything in my kitchen with an 8" chef’s and a paring pair. I have more knives, but I rarely use any of them. My favorites are a Victorinox Fibrox 8" chef’s knife and a paring knife of unknown provenance. I kind of wish Victorinox made a 6" chef’s knife with the same proportions as their 8-incher, but it looks more like a beefed up paring knife, which I don’t really want.
As for “scary sharp”, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but if you’re scared of the sharpness of your knives, you WILL cut yourself. As others have noted, sharp knives are safer and you’re less likely to cut yourself. You will also heal faster from cuts with a sharp knife than with a dull knife. The only way I know to get over the fear of a sharp knife is to use it - A LOT - and keep it sharp all the time. Respect your knife, but don’t fear it.
WRT to a Chinese cleaver as your main knife, my mom used one for years (decades) as her primary knife. Then again, she was born in China and probably what she saw her mother using, but she was damned good with it.
I do agree with Scott’s advice early in the thread, though. Make sure whatever knives you purchase fit YOU. If a knife doesn’t feel like an extension of your hand, it’s probably not going to serve you well and you won’t like it.
Yeah. He does like to use an utility-like knife. Or as Tim said, a petty knife. Someone did a bit of digging and in one of the videos, the knife looks like a Japanese petty knkife, specifically a Takamura Hana petty. Again, I am pretty sure he has multiple utility knives and petty knives.
Identify Jacques Pépin’s knife - Chefknivestogo Forums
[Takamura Hana Damascus HSPS Petty 150mm (5.9") - MTC Kitchen]
(https://mtckitchen.com/takamura-hana-damascus-hsps-petty-150mm-5-9/)
