{"id":528,"date":"2012-07-20T12:31:18","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T11:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ginnyang.com\/?p=528"},"modified":"2014-03-29T16:15:15","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T16:15:15","slug":"a-word-on-knives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/?p=528","title":{"rendered":"A word on knives"},"content":{"rendered":"

I bought a 3 piece Hammer Stahl knife set at the Bristol foodies festival last weekend after Martin Blunos recommended them (and mentioning a 20% discount).\u00a0 The RRP of the set was \u00a3275 – a lot of money for 3 knives!\u00a0 Thankfully they were doing a bit of a deal, selling the set for \u00a3190 with a free 5.5″ Santoku knife.\u00a0 After giving Martin’s recommendation and quoted discount I managed to get the set for \u00a3170, not quite the full 20% discount but they were throwing in a free knife worth \u00a380!<\/p>\n

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All this money spent on a set of knives made me think about all the other knives I’ve had over the past couple of years.\u00a0 When I first got my own place I went out and purchased a cheap, store brand block of knives… probably one of the worst investments of my life.\u00a0 The Chef’s knife lasted a couple of weeks before going completely blunt and I didn’t know enough about sharpening to get it back into decent shape.\u00a0 Even if I had, I doubt it would have done me much good, the knife was simply awful – a crowbar would have been as effective.\u00a0 I made a second mistake by going out and purchasing another cheap chef’s knife to replace it; that one lasted about 3 months before it snapped.\u00a0 After another month of working with my knife shaped hammer I decided to go and purchase something that would at least cut through butter.\u00a0 I ended up spending something between \u00a320-25 on a Stellar 8″ Chef’s knife.\u00a0 It was comfortable to grip, having a rubber handle, it was a good weight and most importantly it was sharp, well for a few months at least.<\/p>\n

\"Knife<\/a>
From left to right: Store brand ‘hammer’, Stellar Chef’s Knife, Hammer Stahl Chef’s Knife.<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

I then discovered how to sharpen (actually hone) a knife using a butcher’s steel.\u00a0 With the steel and my \u00a320 knife I managed to get over 2 years of service – it did get chipped and I also allowed it to become blunt, cutting myself once or twice in the process.\u00a0 But for roughly \u00a320 I thought it was pretty good going.\u00a0 I’ve come to the point where I need to replace it and it just so happened that Martin Blunos was recommending Hammer Stahl knives.\u00a0 I hadn’t heard of Hammer Stahl before (although they look similar to Gunter Wilhelm knives) and it turns out they are fairly new as a company but they do make excellent, beautiful knives.<\/p>\n

At somepoint I will do an article about kitchen knives and how to buy them (update: Kitchen Knife Basics<\/a>).\u00a0 But ultimately buying a knife is a personal choice, the grip, balance and weight of the knife is down to personal preference – sure there are differences in the steel composition of each brand of knife and usually the Japanese steel knives are better, but there is no “ultimate set of knives”.\u00a0 I can properly pinch grip the Hammer Stahl knives, something I didn’t feel comfortable with using the Stellar knife.\u00a0 I’ve tired using top quality Global knives but I didn’t feel comfortable with their handles, so you can buy the most expensive knife money can buy but if you can’t get comfortable with it, it won’t do you any good!\u00a0 A knife is ultimately only as good as the person wielding it.<\/p>\n

The set of knives I bought consist of a 7″ Asian Cleaver (Phoebe has been dying to get her hands on one of these since she came to the UK), an 8″ Chef’s knife and a 3.5″ Paring knife, as well as the thrown in freebie 5.5″ Santoku knife.\u00a0 All stored in a very nice bamboo chopping board.\u00a0 Those three knives are basically the main knives you will need in a kitchen – a good bread knife is also useful.\u00a0 The cleaver will do everything, crush garlic, chop, mince, dice and slice any veg and completely demolish a chicken but it’s fairly heavy so prolonged use might get tiresome.\u00a0 The Chef’s knife is my general purpose knife, I use it for everything except hacking bones (cleaver) and for the very precise, fine carving work (paring knife);\u00a0 It cuts through everything with ease, it’s comfortable and very well balanced with a good weight behind it but without being “heavy”.\u00a0 The paring knife I haven’t used as much yet, but it peels apples easily enough! With regular honing using a ceramic steel and the occasionally sharpening, I reckon these knives will last a long time.\u00a0 They come with a lifetime warranty so if they don’t, they can be replaced!\u00a0 So far I’m very happy with my purchase, particularly for the price I paid.<\/p>\n

So, if you take only one thing away from this, go out and buy yourself a decent Chef’s knife.\u00a0 It doesn’t have to be a \u00a3100 work of art but avoid that cheap, nasty supermarket block of knives and get yourself something useful.\u00a0 You will notice the difference!\u00a0 A sharp knife cuts food, a blunt one cuts your fingers, so whatever you buy, keep it sharp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought a 3 piece Hammer Stahl knife set at the Bristol foodies festival last weekend after Martin Blunos recommended them (and mentioning a 20% discount).\u00a0 The RRP of the set was \u00a3275 – a lot of money for 3 knives!\u00a0 Thankfully they were doing a bit of a deal, selling the set for \u00a3190 with a free 5.5″ Santoku knife.\u00a0 After giving Martin’s recommendation and quoted discount I managed to get the set for[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-muse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/HammerStahl.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1PTCG-8w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1351,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/1351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}