Different Types of Kitchen Knife

If you are a budding cook, chef or even looking to start up a new kitchen store, one of your key skills will be to understand the various different types of kitchen knife and what they all do. It can actually get quite complex when you look in detail at all the different categories of kitchen knives, so we are just going to cover the basics here.

Types of Kitchen Knife

The categories of kitchen knife are roughly sorted by relative size, starting with the smallest first.

Paring Knife

The paring knife often has a blade of around 2-3 inches, and is by far the smallest kitchen knife in the rack. It often has a blade that finishes with a curve towards the tip.

It is commonly used for delicate fruit and vegetable tasks, such as barrelling a potato, carving into a carrot and other tasks where you are working with both handles off the chopping board.

Vegetable Knife

The versatile vegetable knife is many cook’s favorite, because it is often the first thing you start off your prep with. This one clocks in slightly larger with a blade up to 4 inches long. They are generally quite unremarkable to look at, and they will never get a strong reaction from people perusing your knife rack.

Great for slicing, but not so great for chopping and dicing, because the blade is not long enough or wide enough. You will often finding yourself swapping out for a chef’s knife when you realize the vegetable isn’t going to cut it (no pun intended).

Tomato Knife

A cross between the vegetable knife and paring knife, except it is serrated for slicing through the skin of a tomato (you need a really sharp straight edge to guarantee to squishing). About the same size as the vegetable knife, but has a curved blade to the tip.

Chef’s Knife / Chef’s Knives

By far the most popular and renowned kitchen knife the world over, largely because it is exceptionally well qualified to do all sorts of different tasks. Sizes can range from slightly larger than a vegetable knife with a blade of 6 inches all the way up to a 12 inch chef’s knife (which is definitely in the large category).

Many people have a medium and large chef’s knife to handle their prep and cooking work, because a large can be too large, and a medium doesn’t have enough weight to get through the more challenging tasks.

You will most likely find yourself spending most time with the chef’s knife, so pick it carefully, as it will be your all round kitchen knife.

Cleaver

The Daddy of all kitchen knives, the cleaver is instantly recognizable from horror films. Can be 10-12 inches long and at least 6 inches deep, often with a small hole at the top of the blade body (to prevent sticking).

A lot of the cheaper kitchen knife sets include a meat cleaver in with them, which is something I can not really understand.

I am willing to make a bet that you don’t need a cleaver, and you shouldn’t bother cluttering up your kitchen with one.

However, if you are routinely into splitting up parts of an animal carcas or trying to get through joints and bone, you are allowed one!

A note on Japanese Knives

Over recent years, Japanese kitchen knives have made a lot of noise in the west. Their chef’s knife equivilant - the Santoku - is a very popular choice for Western kitchens these days. Whilst many of these are incredibly good knives (and expensive), they are designed for Eastern cooking (a lot of vertical chopping), so they do not always go well with Western cooking.