Wusthoff Charcuterie Set

Did you ever get a cheese knife set and then need to read the instructions to see what each knife is used for? And the you lose the instructions and you have these odd knives that you're totally not sure about?

Yeah, me too. A cheesemonger might know, but my cheese needs aren't quite that finicky.

This set is different. It's dubbed a charcuterie set, no doubt because of the robust serrated knife that's supposed to be used for sausage. It's pretty darned obvious that's what it's for. It's got mean teeth. It can handle your pepperoni and your salami and your bratwurst.

The paddle-shaped knife is the perfect device for scooping and spreading pate or soft cheeses onto bread or crackers. It's nice and wide, so you can make one decisive swoop to cover a cracker instead of a bunch of small smears.

The third knife in the set is the one with the holes in the blade. This isn't some kind of metal-saving tactic. The holes are there so that when you slice the cheese, there's less blade surface for it to stick to, so it will release from the knife easier.

While these would look lovely nestled together on your charcuterie platter, that's not what my life is like. I'm more likely to be cutting cheese for a snack, not lovingly placing it on a platter. Schmears of food on a cracker might be pimento cheese or it might be herbed cream cheese, or it might be (gasp!) peanut butter. And that toothed knife? Sure, I might slice sausage, but I might also grab it for slicing a crusty sandwich.

The point (haha, knife pun) is that all of these knives will find uses in your kitchen aside from displaying them on the cheese board once a year. You'll use them a lot.

Like all Wusthof knives, these are well made, and with that comes with a price tag that's not cheap. Honestly, though, I think these are worth it. I have a set in my Amazon cart right now, waiting for Santa to press the button.

WÜSTHOF Burger Knives

When I got a set of burger knives from WÜSTHOF, I posted a photo on Facebook, and one of the first comments was something about how people don't need knives for burgers ... how silly is that?

(This was published 8/14/17 - scroll all the way to the bottom for my edit on 2/12/18 after I lived with these for a while.)

Well, I can kind of see the point, but then again, I have steak knives. And butter knives. And cheese spreading knives. And lots and lots and lots of kitchen knives.

I also have regular forks and salad forks and weird little seafood forks. My everyday flatware includes regular small spoons, tablespoons, and soup spoons.

Are burger knives necessary? Well, no, but neither are my salad forks but I use them a lot. Those weird little seafood forks, however, don't get used very often at all.

Burger knives might not be the best name for these knives because it doesn't really explain how versatile they are. The wide, flat, rounded blade is great for spreading mustard or mayo or other sauces. The serrated part of the knife was perfect for slicing a tomato. And then the knife also did a fine job slicing the burger neatly in half to make it a little easier to eat..

It's also great for stabbing into a burger from the top to make an interesting presentation.

So, yeah, the knives are good for burgers, but they'd be good for pretty much any sandwich assembly job. And probably other jobs as well. This time of year, there are a lot of tomatoes in my kitchen that need slicing.

Who's it for: People who make burgers and other sandwiches.

Pros: Nice multi-use knives. They look good stabbing a burger.

Cons: If you're counting down the top 3 knives everyone needs, these probably aren't on the list.

Wishes: Hmmm. They're knives. They cut. It's hard to come up with something I'd change.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review. The plate in the top photo was provided by Zak!


UPDATE 2/12/18

So, this post garnered a bit of controversy among my online friends, mostly those who scoffed at the idea of a knife make just for burgers. The horror!

But here's the thing. You don't just use a steak knife for steaks, do you? You might pull those out for pork chops or even a roast - any time there's some meat that you don't want to cut with the knife that came with your flatware set. You don't use a paring knife just for paring. You don't use a chef's knife just for ... uh, yeah, that's not why it has that name.

But anyway.

After living with these knives, I think perhaps the name was a bit to narrow, because these have become my everyday knives. Not burger knives, and not sandwich knives, as I originally suggested. Any time I make a meal that requires a knife to eat (as opposed to, let's say, spaghetti or risotto), I use one of these knives. Seriously. Every time.

I also use them when I'm making sandwiches. Yeah, I said that before, but it's worth repeating. These aren't just for eating food, you can use them for preparing food. And when the sandwich is finished, I use the knife to cut the sandwich in half, because I'm not some sort of savage.

Rather than storing these away in their box for fancy dinners, the box has been tossed and the knives are used almost every day. And, aside from the stunt burger in the top photo, I don't think I've used them at all for burgers.

Great knives. Possibly not a great name.

Sabatier Edgekeeper Self Sharpening Knives

Sharp knives are a pleasure to use in the kitchen, but I have feeling that most folks don't recognize when their knives need sharpening. The dulling process happens pretty slowly, so it's not like one day you're slicing through carrots like a pro and the next day you're struggling to cut through a hard boiled egg.

What I hear often is that someone will get a new knife and they'll be all giddy about how sharp it is compared to the old ones they have. It's not that the old knives were always sup-bar. It's just that over time, they got dull, and the new knife is perfectly sharp.

While there are a ton of different sharpening tools, it seems that most folks don't own them, they don't use them, or they don't know how to use them. So their knives just get duller and duller.

When I heard about the self- sharpening knives from Sabatier, I was intrigued. How does this magic work? I imagined the knives coming to life at night and getting to work on keeping that sharp slicing edge.

So I said, yes, send me samples. I received the 8-inch slicer, the 8-inch chef's knife and the 3 1/2 inch paring knife to test. They came securely packaged, and each included a sheath. I unpackaged, inspected, sliced, and even took a knife to a friend's house to get a second opinion.

Alas, the magic is not quite as mystical as I imagined. Each of the knifes sheaths has a little embedded sharpener, so every time you insert the knife or take it out, the blade runs through that sharpener.

Well, sort of. If you slide the knife into the sheath with the top edge (the flat unsharp side) sliding against the sheath, the sharp edge of the blade doesn't make much contact with the sharpener. So you do need to pay attention to how you're sliding the knife in and out of the sheath. It's not difficult, and it's certainly not necessary to slide against the sharpener every single time. But if it's your goal to keep the knife sharp at all times, it's a good idea to get into the habit of letting the blade contact that sharpener regularly.

For me, that took a little bit of thought to make it a habit. I don't use a lot of sheaths - my favorite knives are on a magnetic hanger, and other knives are in a block - but when I use a sheath, I tend to try to keep the blade from scraping the sheath. So I had to remember to run the blade along the sharpener, and in the case of knives with a curved edge, I had to make sure the whole length of the blade contacted the sharpener. Once it became a habit, it was easy peasy.

I think this is a genius idea, particularly for people who don't want to deal with sharpening knives regularly and for people who are intimidated by the idea of doing their own sharpening. Even better, these knives are affordable. Most of them are under $20, so these would be great for new kitchens, vacation homes, for a take-along knife in the picnic basket, or in a desk drawer at work for apple emergencies.

Who's it for: Everyone needs a good knife, right? But these are particularly good for people just starting out, or for anyone who's averse to sharpening their knives with a stand-alone sharpener.

Pros: It really works.

Cons: I haven't had these long enough to know how long the sharpener will remain useful. I imagine it will be years, but not generations. On the other hand, the knives are not expensive, so I don't think anyone will expect to pass them down to grandchildren.

Wishes: A self-sharpening steak knife set would be kind of sweet. Does anyone ever sharpen those? And having sheaths to store them would be better than a box.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.

Brod and Taylor Knife Sharpener

My dad was a machinist and tool-and-die maker by trade, back in the day when everything was done by hand and computers were the stuff of science fiction. He sharpened his own drill bits and made his own special cutting tools.

Just before Thanksgiving rolled around every year, he'd take his sharpening skills into the kitchen to take care of the kitchen knives, because there's no way he'd carve the turkey with a knife that wasn't razor-sharp.

I can remember the soft skrishhh-skrishhh-skrishhh-skrishhh as he ran the knife over the sharpening stone, moving from the tip of the knife to the hilt until the the knife was deemed sharp enough. It seemed like it took hours. Maybe it did. It was hypnotic. And when he was done, every knife was as sharp as it could be.

I still have those sharpening stones, and I know how to sharpen knives the way he did. And I do it regularly ...

Aw, heck, no I don't. Although it's a pleasant task, I don't have time to sharpen knives like that. Maybe when I'm retired and then I give up cooking to subsist on canned beans and hot dogs, I'll have time to sharpen knives by hand. But at that point, my keepers probably won't allow me to have sharp objects.

When I saw a unique looking knife sharpener from Brod and Taylor at the Housewares Show in Chicago this past March, I got a short demo of it at the show, and I was pretty impressed with what I saw and what they said.

It was super-easy to use, even if you haven't a clue what angle a knife should be sharpened. You can sharpen aggressively, which removes metal from the knife, or you can hone the knife, or you can polish it. You can use it for serrated knives, too. And it's compact and interesting looking, so you can set it on a shelf and pretend it's modern art.

I've sharpened my most-used knives and it was so easy it's ridiculous. It took no time at all. It's nearly foolproof as long as you remember that most knives only need honing and polishing, and that the aggressive sharpening is only for knives that are seriously beat up.

Who's it for: People who want an easy way to sharpen knives

Pros: Easy to use. Works well.

Cons: It's a little spendy. There are less-expensive models from Brod and Taylor, but I haven't tested them.

Wishes: Little hieroglyphics that show knife sharpening positions etched into the sharpener would be handy. Edit: I've just been informed (ahem) that there are handy pictures on the bottom of the sharpener that show exactly this. On the bottom. Where they don't mar the clean esthetic of the sharpener itself. I love how they read my mind before I had the thought.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.

Kuhn Rikon coated knife set

The one tool that pretty much everyone needs in the kitchen is a knife.

Or two or three, really. It's nice to have a small knife for paring and a large one for heftier slicing and chopping tasks.

A mid-sized knife is nice for basic cutting, when a chef's knife is too big or too wide for the task.

And although it's not strictly necessary, I think it's nice to have at least one knife with a serrated edge for cutting tomatoes and similar foods.

That sounds like a lot of knifes, which could be expensive, right?

But not everyone needs super-expensive knives. I mean, you can spend a thousand dollars on a hand-made knife. Or, you can pay your mortgage.

And there are some people who really don't need knives that are in the sort-of expensive range. Like people who are just starting out and have tons of other things to buy.

Or people who are living in dorms or who have room mates who might not take great care of the kitchen tools.

Or people who don't cook a lot and only need basics.

Or they'd be great knives for your picnic basket or vacation home or maybe you'd take one to work for sandwich and salad cutting at your desk.

The coated knives from Kuhn Rikon are perfect for all those folks. They're good knives, but not expensive. they're coated so they're easy to clean. They're different colors, so you can ask someone to hand you the red knife or the blue knife and you know you'll get the right one. They come with sheaths, so you can safely store them in a drawer.

The set I got came with a larger slicing/chef knife, a small serrated knife, and a mid-sized thinner utility knife. I've been using this set for a while to test them, and they've been fine. Unlike some other alleged non-stick knives I have, these slide easily through food. They're sharp enough for cutting carrots and slicing meat and the serrated knife is nice for tomatoes.

I haven't tried sharpening them yet, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't. Depending on how you go about it, it could mess with the coating on the very edge of the knife, but I don't think that's a big deal. Knives are for using, not for displaying.

Who's it for: People who want good but not expensive knives.

Pros: Decent knives for the price.

Cons: These aren't the knives you'd buy for a budding sushi master.

Wishes: For the price, you really couldn't ask for more.

Source: I received this from the manufacturer for the purpose of a review.