The 3 essential kitchen knives every cook needs

The number of styles and types of kitchen knives for home cooks to choose from is enough to make your head spin. Plenty of people end up with one of those big block sets and just carry on with their cooking lives, but in the vast majority of cases, those sets contain far more pieces than the average cook will ever need.

In reality, most people can get away with just three: a chef’s knife, a paring knife and a serrated knife.

“If I were to have just the bare bones, those are the three,” Nini Nguyen, chef, cooking instructor and author of the upcoming cookbook “Đặc Biệt,” told me on a video call from her home in New Orleans. Here’s what you need to know about each.

Chef’s knife

“Your chef’s knife is going to be your workhorse,” Nguyen said. It is the knife that you’re going to grab for the vast majority of your tasks in the kitchen, such as slicing onions, cutting butternut squash and breaking down a chicken. However, these kitchen MVPs present home cooks with lots of options when selecting one to add to your arsenal.

“But what kind of chef’s knife to buy?” staff writer Tim Carman wrote in The Washington Post. “A Western-style knife with a softer, V-shaped blade and a pointed tip? Or a Japanese santoku or nakiri knife with a harder, single-edged blade and a more rounded (or flat) tip? Or maybe a hybrid knife, like one with hard Japanese steel but a heavier, Western-style handle? The choices are seemingly endless.”

For Nguyen, hybrid knives are her tool of choice. “I basically like Western-style knives made by Japanese companies,” she said. “I like the handle. I like how it holds. But I like the 50-50 bevel because it’s easier to sharpen.”

And when it comes to sharpness, the blade’s material makes all the difference in how long it keeps its edge. “I like the Japanese powdered steel because it stays sharp,” Nguyen said. “Carbon steel is really, really sharp, but it’s also very soft and so it dulls very fast,” which means more maintenance that she would not recommend for the average home cook.

Size is another important factor in selecting a chef’s knife. Nguyen likes average eight-inch knives, as she finds longer ones can be a little unwieldy. For cooks with smaller hands, she recommends a petty knife, which is the middle ground between a chef’s knife and a paring knife at around five or six inches long. “It can do a lot of good stuff,” she said.

When purchasing any knife, but especially a chef’s knife, Nguyen’s number one rule is to go to an actual store and hold it. “Hold a lot of different knives and see what feels most comfortable [in] your hand,” she said. “Everyone has that one knife they always reach for when they’re in the kitchen. Make sure that you feel that knife and make sure it is going to be the knife you always reach for, because the chef’s knife is going to be the number one [knife] that you’re always going to use.”

I have a Shun classic Asian cook’s knife that I bought when I first started working in restaurants. Recipes editor Becky Krystal likes the Victorinox Swiss classic chef’s knife, which is also what we have in our Food Lab, where we test recipes. Other favorites among the Food team include the Wüsthof classic chef’s knife, the MAC professional series chef’s knife with dimples and the Sabatier carbon steel chef’s knife (despite the increased maintenance).

Paring knife

“The paring knife is going to be for smaller projects,” Nguyen said, such as peeling apples and hulling and slicing strawberries. “You use them for all the stuff that you never want to use for your chef’s knife, so I would say don’t spend too much money.”

While there are more expensive options on the market, you can find a good paring knife for around $10 that will suit most home cooks just fine. “I just kind of use whichever one is around,” Nguyen said. The go-to for pretty much everyone on the Food staff is also from Victorinox, and they also make a popular serrated paring knife.

Serrated knife

Sometimes also called a bread knife, a serrated knife is really the only tool you should use to cut through a loaf. “Nothing is worse than watching someone — and I tried to do it today — cut bread with a regular knife,” Nguyen said. It’s all thanks to how they’re designed. “The long blade with a series of sharp teeth excels at neatly cutting through the exterior of crusty loaves and gliding through soft ones without crushing them,” Krystal wrote in The Post a few years ago.

But they can be used for more than just bread. Serrated knives are ideal for cutting through tomatoes without smashing them, leveling cakes and chopping chocolate bars with less mess than a straight blade. “It’s also is great for carving,” Nguyen said, who uses hers for ham and watermelon. Another novel use? “If you’re turning artichokes and your knives are dull, the serrated knife is the fastest way to go through those fibrous [parts].”

Like chef’s knives, “Not all serrated knives are the same,” Nguyen said. They come in different lengths and the handles can be either straight in line with the blade or offset. So again, hold a few to find the one that’s right for you.

Nguyen likes the brand Tojiro, because it has a thin and flexible blade. I still use the Mercer serrated knife that came in the kit I got from culinary school, which is also the brand Krystal recommends.

While great tools are a good thing, it’s even more important that you know how to use them. “It doesn’t matter what knife you have, it’s your knife skills,” Nguyen said. “[With] good knife skills and just the basic knives you can get every job done.”