All in One Kitchen Knife

So, you want an all in one Kitchen Knife do you? Well, I’m afraid the news isn’t too rosy as it is not really practical to have an all in one kitchen knife…but you can get close.

The myth of the All In One Kitchen Knife

Do you remember those pens that have 10 different colors in them, and you just have to pull a switch down to get the color you wanted at the time? Great little all in one, but not an analogy we can carry over to kitchen knives, I’m afraid.

A similar metaphor for trying to dream up the perfect all in one kitchen knife is that of the famous swiss army knife - it’s got pretty much everything you need on it for survival in the outdoors, but you wouldn’t cook a three course gourmet dinner party with it.

That’s because it is not a specialist tool, and nor is the pen - both are very general in the problems that they are trying to solve. Kitchen knives are a different beast, and unfortunately you do really need more that one to get by.

You don’t need as many as you think

If you head into the more general homeware stores and supermarkets, you will likely be overwhelemd by the sheer number of kitchen knives they are sellin in their kitchen knife sets. This is absolutely overkill and not at all reflective of what you actually need to get by in the kitchen.

I have endlessly preached on this site about how you should invest your kitchen budget in a few good quality knives that will then be able to serve you well for years to come. You do not need 18 knives in a cheap wooden block with a cleaver thrown in for good measure. You will probably never have the need to use a cleaver in your life (and just because you own one doesn’t mean you have the need to use it!); they are meat cleavers and used by the butchers to break through joints and small bones. (Incidentally, I once someone trying to return a Shun meat cleaver because it wasn’t very good at slicing onions. Surprising, that).

I personally have four kitchen knives and one bread knife, which I think is plenty enough. You can probably get away with three (and a kitchen knife). You need:

• A vegetable of paring knife (these are typically 3-4 inches long) to do small delicate work
• A chef’s knife (can be between 6-10 inches) for the general purpose day to day chopping, slicing and dicing
• A large chef’s knife for the bigger stuff and for rapid chopping on a board (you know, like the chefs do on TV)

With those in your drawer/rack/block you will be just fine. We only think we need a knife block full of differently sized blades.

As a closing point, you should remember that the more kitchen knives you have, the more there is to wash up (because we don’t put kitchen knives in the dishwasher…do we!)