Types of Kitchen Knives

Knife makers sell dozens of shapes, and a block set will happily give you eight of them. But the truth is a home cook needs three knives, uses two, and could get by with one. Here's what each common type is actually for, so you can buy on purpose instead of buying a block.

The three you actually need

• Chef's knife (8"): the workhorse. Does 90% of cutting — chopping, slicing, dicing, mincing. If you buy one knife, buy this. See best chef knives.
• Paring knife (3–4"):the small-detail knife — peeling, trimming, hulling strawberries, anything fiddly a big blade can't do.
• Serrated bread knife (8–10"):the only knife that saws cleanly through crusty bread and soft tomatoes without crushing them, and the one job a chef's knife genuinely can't do well.

The chef's-knife alternatives (Japanese profiles)

Several knives do the chef's-knife job with a different shape. They're worth understanding, because a "santoku" or "gyuto" is often just a chef's knife by another name:

• Gyuto:the Japanese chef's knife. Same role as a Western chef's knife, usually thinner and harder. The Tojiro and MAC on our lists are gyutos.
• Santoku:a shorter (~7"), flatter Japanese all-rounder with less belly curve. Great for straight up-and-down chopping; less suited to rock-chopping. A fine chef's-knife alternative for smaller hands. See chef knife vs santoku.
• Nakiri: a rectangular, flat-edged Japanese vegetable knife. Superb for prepping lots of produce with clean push cuts; not a do-everything blade.

The specialists (buy only if you'll use them)

• Cleaver:a heavy rectangular blade for hacking through bone and joints (Western) or, in its lighter Chinese-cleaver form, a surprisingly versatile vegetable knife. Most home cooks don't need one.
• Boning / fillet knife:a thin, flexible blade for separating meat from bone or filleting fish. Essential if you break down proteins, pointless if you don't.
• Utility / carving knife: a mid-size blade for slicing roasts and larger produce. Nice to have; rarely essential.

The takeaway

Buy a great chef's knife, a paring knife, and a serrated bread knife — then add a specialist only when a specific job keeps annoying you. That's also why we're lukewarm on block sets: they sell you the shapes you'll never use to justify the price. Pick the right chef's knife first, and most of the block becomes unnecessary.