Elyse Kopecky's Guide to Buying the Right Knife

[Part of the Mastering Meal Prep with Elyse Kopecky series]

Read the transcript:

ELYSE KOPECKY:

In this episode, we’re going to talk about knives and the best brands and what to invest in. So you have all your basics covered. You can buy one of those block sets of knives that includes all the different types of knives, or you can piece together your own individual set of some of the best types of knives.

There’s a lot of different, great brands out there, but it’s definitely worth investing in a top quality brand chef’s knife. You’re going to use this multiple times a day. This is going to become your go-to knife in the kitchen.

The different knives that I have in my kitchen, I have a couple of different chef’s knives. I use them a lot, so I have a few different ones.

You definitely want to have a good serrated knife for cutting like big loaves of crusty bread if you bake your own bread, or if you buy bread from a bakery that’s not sliced. You want a really good bread knife.

I also like to have a smaller serrated knife. Mostly I use this for tomatoes and the summertime tomatoes are really soft. You don’t want to use a flat edge on tomatoes, this will cut through them a lot easier. If you make your own salsas and things, definitely invest in a smaller serrated knife.

I use also a paring knife. A smaller knife is a good multi-purpose tool in the kitchen. I especially use this for peeling fruits. A paring knife is going to help you remove the skin off of oranges and grapefruit and lemons and limes and things like that really easily. So a smaller paring knife is really handy, but for your chef’s knife, definitely invest in one of my favorite brands.

There’s a few different options. I like Zwilling and Shun. This is a Shun, the Japanese style. This is a Zwilling knife, really good company. There’s other brands like Wusthof and so many different choices. You can go into a knife store and try different ones out, but definitely worth getting it from a kitchen store where you can talk through the different styles and find out what you really like.