For ages I've been wanting a new knife set, because I've never had one before and I'd been using the same few dull knives for years... so today I found a great deal on a nice knife set, with the wooden block for storing them, and bought it. 20 dollars for 26 knives!

They are nice knives, but now I wish I would have waited and found a smaller set! This one comes with things I've never even heard of, like a partoku knife... which I can't even identify from the pile of knives I unpacked. It also has three paring knives- a chef's parer, a bird's beak parer, and a "regular" paring knife. I've never even had one parking knife before, never mind 3! I don't even know what the difference is between those, and Google won't tell me. There's a sandwich knife... I can't tell the difference between that and the utility knife. Blah! 

I do like the boning knife though- I used it to separate some chicken leg quarters, and it took just a few seconds each, when I'd had to saw at them forever with my older duller knife. I also like the kitchen shears, and it has 12 steak knives. 6 fit into the wood block, and I stored the extra six, I guess to give away or use when the first 6 go dull. 

Do you use a lot of different knives, or do just a few good ones do everything you need? 

 I have a small set of cutco knives

• a butcher knife
• a paring knife
• a bread knife (serrated edge)
• a spatula spreader knife

I also have a few other cutco things like a vegetable peeler, turning fork etc.  I invested years ago in quality knives and I love them, I wish I had a couple more paring knives, and maybe even another bread knife.  I use those several times a day.  Cutco has a lifetime warranty, so I figured i am set for life.  Even though in the last six years they haven't dulled at all1

 I have a chef's knife with an 8 inch blade that I use for almost everything.  I love using that to chop veggies or thin slices of meats. 

I use a long serrated knife for bread and slicing a ham or turkey breast.

I use the boning knife for cutting pork chops or steaks from a loin or ribeye and also for seperating a whole chicken into parts.

I use the scissors for many different things.

Of course, we use steak knive at dinner time.

I have a couple of paring knives that I use when peeling things or to quickly cut something.

 I use a grapefruit knife (the long skinny, curved, serrated knife) for sections citrus and peeling tomatoes.

I have half a drawer of other knives that rarely ever get used for anything.

 

I use my 3 different kitchen shears for a lot of things. I have Chicago kitchen scissors, Wustoff kitchen scissors, and pink KitchenAid kitchen scissors. I got the Chicago pair back in 1989.

 I also have a wooden block with knives plus Mom got me some other knives.

I also have a wonderful knife that cuts frozen things that my ex-boyfriend made me get back when I had an apartment in Richmond. He said it would last and it has. Mom loved it and used it a lot.

Some of the kitchen shops have knife skills demos. You might check Williams-Sonoma or Sur la table.

 We have 4 utility knives of different size and one kitchen shears.  Keep them sharpened regularly.  Have had them for 20+ years.  I don't get the entire accumulation of kitchen stuff, though. 

rolo:

 We have 4 utility knives of different size and one kitchen shears.  Keep them sharpened regularly.  Have had them for 20+ years.  I don't get the entire accumulation of kitchen stuff, though. 

 

I have a drawer full of knives I need to clean out - not because I bought them, but because no one in my family throws anything away.  I have knives from my mother, my father, my step-father's mother.... others I can't remember who gave them to me.  Some of the ones I got from my father have rust spots, and I need to either clean them up or donate them to Goodwill, but I haven't had time to get to it.

I have mulltiples of several types of items from the same sources - anything still useful that someone doesn''t want eventually ends up in my house, which can be both good and bad, as I hate to get rid of something I might need at some point (a crock I didn't want originally is now being used to replace one that broke) but I'm running out of places to store things.  Still, there are worse problems to have.

 I got curious and looked up bird beak parer. VERY nice!  It's a tourne knife, which I remember using as a garnish knife. All the rosettes and such.  It was great for stuffing veggies, esp. mushrooms as it was thin and precise.

I really don't need another knife, I use most of my set (but boyo, would I swap for one of those)

I have a 5 knife set plus a vegetable cleaver (which is one of those items one uses  when dispatching a load of veggies for cooking-freezing at once, rather than in typical prep) .

I sprang for Cutco when I had a better job, and a weak moment. They gave me the veggie cleaver as a deal sweetener. A sharpener came with the set, as did a small block that can stand or hang. The cleaver does not fit in the block.

I'd still get high quality knives if I had it to do again, but I'd build my own set, and probably not bother with a block. I'd go for a magnetic strip.

I also was given a blade that makes wiggly cuts like jarred pickle slices. Far from a necessity, but carrots look a tad better in soups this way.