- I should take this off
'cause it is another brand. [laughs]
[upbeat instrumental music]
- This is one of my favorite knives.
- [Man] Whoa!
- Brad actually gave me this knife.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- I have a lot of knives.
I have kind of a shocking
number of knives.
I've just kind of acquired
them over the years.
This is a Bob Kramer for Zwilling
knife, it's eight inch chef knife
from his Meiji line.
It's very fine grained, stainless steel.
I got to go visit Bob's studio with Brad
for an episode of "It's Alive."
- Oh it's magnetic.
- Oh shit.
Whoa ho!
- Whoa ho!
Where'd he come from?
Little stowaway.
- [Chris] I worked with
Bob on sharping this knife,
had a chance to talk to
him about his knives.
It's also, it's very lively,
hear that ting, ting,
ting, that's what I love.
You getting that on the audio?
That provides a really nice
feedback between what's
happening under the blade and your hand.
This to me is just an
all around great knife.
Not too much rock to it,
but it has a little bit
of rock in that belly there.
I'm more of like a push cutter,
so it just gives me a nice, smooth motion.
And when this thing is sharp, it's sharp.
I sharpened this, yeah, a few weeks ago,
and we still, we got hairs.
A lot of it is like
honestly in the details.
That's the difference between
$150 knife and $350 knife.
The fact that this is all rounded
and sanded and polished
so that it's smooth,
the top is totally rounded and smoothed.
The transitions are totally
beautiful and perfect.
Where the handle is stepped in
and where it meets the blade,
all of that is very well thought about.
Even though the handle sort
of seems a little bit long,
it's wood, it's like a synthetic wood,
and honestly it's like a
very beautifully balanced knife.
It is not a particularly heavy knife.
I have lighter knives, but
this is not like some cleaver.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- Yeah this is one of my favorite knives.
A gentleman out of Los
Angeles, Fell Knives, made it
with me and it's just a profile based off
of a different knife I've
been using for a long time.
And he kind of just brought
it to the next level.
Nice high carbon, but I
like it because it's big,
but it also, it also has like
a nice little lively edge.
It's not like a cleaver, it's like,
you can use it.
I'm not gonna go splitting
pig heads with it,
although it could probably
really take a beating.
But it's like a workhorse
but it can also be used like a scalpel.
- Cool.
- I mean it's easy to,
to travel with.
This, a paring knife, and a bread knife,
it's really all you need.
It does have a rather long handle,
I mean I got a pretty big mitt.
It's got a pretty nice handle.
And it's really important
to me that all the edges,
especially where you're gonna be
holding and cutting, up here, in here,
they're all rounded and
polished real smooth.
Because when those are left just straight,
90 degree angle edges,
I mean any chef or
someone who's been cooking
for a long time, you get a new knife
or a knife that isn't polished
and rounded off like that,
and you start cutting for a couple hours,
you get little blisters!
And you get little marks
and over time they turn into calluses.
But it can be avoided
with just a nice little,
little details like that.
High carbon so you get that between
and it will rust on you,
but it'll also just gets a wicked edge.
It probably will just
take the hair right off.
- [Man] Whoa!
All right.
- A little shave job, huh?
- [Man] That was beautiful.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- I'm not the best chopper.
My culinary skills lie
elsewhere I would say.
So when I'm looking for a knife,
I'm looking for something that
is not too big of a boy,
that I'll feel like I can handle.
It's not unwieldy.
I'm a left handed chef.
A lot of the grips on knives
are built for rightys.
This one doesn't have any of those grips.
This the Zwilling J.A. Henckels
Pro-FRIODUR Ice-Hardened No-Stain knife.
And it doesn't have any grooves,
so as a lefty I feel really comfortable.
It's not too big.
I feel a certain level of
control when I'm chopping.
I love this knife, it works great.
Seven inches, not too big, not too small.
Sometimes in the test kitchen
they hand me these knives
that are this big.
[dramatic suspense music]
It's like you're handing me like a sword
to cut like a small piece of cheese.
I like one that I don't
have to sharpen very often.
I'm not someone who is
religiously sharpening my knives,
like Andy Baraghani over here.
And I found what I really
like about this one
is that it doesn't lose its edge.
It stays pretty sharp.
I think I've had this knife for four years
and I've only had to
sharpen it a few times.
And it kinda always feels pretty smooth.
It never feels like it's going super dull.
Which is really nice.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- Okay this is
a utility knife, it's a six inch knife.
It's by a company named
New West Knifeworks.
Brad actually gave me this knife
He gave me this one because he
said it was my size. [laughs]
I love the handle.
It's a blade that inside
has the same steel.
That is what they use for military stuff.
So this is like, a really,
really well done knife.
It has great balance.
That means when you hold it in your hand,
it has even weight on both sides.
I have a lot of knives at home.
I have from paring knives,
from chef knives, cleavers.
This one is my to go every day.
Chopping a little salad,
chopping a little garlic,
peeling something.
I think that's why it's
called utility knife
because it has too many uses.
Utilities, is that a word? [laughs]
But the way I grab a knife,
the way I will start
off how to grab a knife
and the way I teach, usually
when I teach children, is
you should grab your index and your thumb
on the blade, blade here.
And your other three fingers
here, holding the handle.
So because this is what is
gonna hold the whole knife,
and this is what's gonna guide it.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- This is not the biggest
knife in my toolkit,
but it is one of my favorites.
It's a MAC five and a half inch,
approximately, utility knife.
And what I really like about
this knife is the shape.
So unlike your standard German
or like French style,
very bowed chef's knife,
it is almost straight like a slicer,
it really mimics the shape
of my favorite slicing knife.
And I have small hands,
so actually a knife in this size,
five to six inches,
is great, it puts me up
really close to the ingredient
that I'm working with.
It's great for prepping
vegetables, chopping vegetables.
But it's also thin
enough and nimble enough,
I would totally butcher
a chicken with this.
I would cut fish into filets,
I would trim scallops,
I would do a lot of things.
It's just a great,
all-purpose utility knife
that feels great in my hand.
So I think the three knives
that everybody should have
are a long, slicing or chef's knife.
Somewhere in a utility or paring knife.
And then a serrated knife.
So for me this is doing double duty
as my paring knife and
my little veg prep knife.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- Okay, so this right
now is my favorite knife.
It's a petty knife from
New West Knifeworks.
And it's about, it's got
about a five inch long blade,
so it's a little bigger
than a paring knife
and definitely shorter
than a chef's knife.
I used to be the kind of
person who insisted on doing
everything with a chef's knife,
but at this point, I really,
I grab this a lot for kind
of more delicate knife work.
It's got this kind of short blade,
it's nice and narrow, it's really sharp,
and it has this long handle,
which kind of gives me a lot of control
and it's really balanced.
It's great for getting in and kind of
coring a head of cauliflower, or,
just I'll have it in my
hand when I'm picking herbs
just to kind of make that process easier.
I find myself kind of rarely reaching
for a chef's knife at this point.
This is the one that I grab most often
and the one that I travel with.
I can just put it in this little,
this handy dandy little sheath.
Throw it in my tote bag if
I'm going away for the week
and I know my friends are
gonna have really bad knives
or whatever.
But don't wanna seem like a total nerd
and bring a whole knife kit.
This is the one that I travel with.
This can kind of do almost
everything that I need.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- This is one of my favorite knives.
It is not my favorite knife
because my favorite
knife is a chef's knife
'cause I find it the most useful.
But, second best,
is this knife which is a tomato knife.
So it's serrated on one edge,
and then it's forked on the tip,
and I'll show you how you use it.
Can make super thin slices.
And then, the best part,
is this is used to pick the slices up
and move them.
So you just fork 'em and move them over
without getting all slippery and sloppery.
I think the holes in the
knife are here so that
the tomato slices don't stick
to the side of the knife.
And then I also use this
for things like soft rolls
or softer breads where it can stand in
for a serrated knife.
And it's also great for
cheese, for cheese plates.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- So this is my favorite knife,
but I will say, it's
probably the knife that I
definitely do not use the most
compared to a chef's knife.
I'm gonna have a little
"Kill Bill" moment.
Lucy Liu, if you remember that.
It's small but mighty.
It's a Japanese boning knife.
Boning knife is usually when
you're trying to remove,
separate the flesh from
the bones of an animal.
I would use this mostly for lamb, chicken.
Pork, beef, I wouldn't use this.
You could use this on
fish, but I wouldn't.
It's a carbon steel,
the way you sharpen this
is in a 50/50 blade,
meaning that you can't,
you don't sharpen the sides equal amounts.
With this it's a 70/30,
so it's a little bit
of a different ratio.
Yeah, it's just so badass.
But I think if you're a home cook,
I would definitely have the chef's,
the paring knife, and a bread knife.
I doubt most people are breaking down
big pieces of meat, but if you want to,
I would go with a boning knife.
[upbeat instrumental music]
Yeah, it's just so badass.
- [Priya] My boyfriend was like,
"Why do you need to bring the
knife to the test kitchen?
"Y'all gonna just like,"
I don't know, he made
some really dark joke,
I'm not gonna say.
He was like, "You're all
gonna stab each other?"
I was like, "No, it's just," anyways.
