Instantly SharpenYour Cooking Skills By Investing In These Knives

Changing these is a game-changer.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a cheap and cheerful kind of gal.

But some things are worth the expense if they make your life better.

Cooking is an important skill these days. If you want to be healthy and save money, you must cook.

But, more and more people are falling into two impractical camps these days. It seems they either want to avoid it altogether or employ some magic solution. The avoiders choose fast food, and the magic-bulleters are buying expensive pre-made meal kits.

So while they are more convenient, both of these options are very expensive and don’t really contribute to your family’s overall health.

Fast food is full of fat and salt, and the pre-packaged meal kits, give you one meal. It’s not your groceries, and it doesn’t teach you how to cook, shop, or plan. There is no real element of education in that box. It gives the illusion of teaching you to fish, but it’s really just a box of fish.

My position is, if you learn to cook, you take control of so much more than just food. You are implementing lessons about budget, health, food knowledge, and independence. It forces you to pay attention.

Even busy people can cook dinner, it just takes a little forethought and a willingness to learn.

But part of what holds people back from wanting to cook is the gear they use.

Many people don’t have the right tools to make the job easier. I’ve written about the small appliances I use daily, and now I’m going to write about the number one thing that you need to make the job easier: Good knives.

When I started as a personal chef, my first client was a millionaire. His kitchen had what I needed.

When I decided to branch out with my business, I didn’t own any knives, so I used whatever each client had in their home.

But not all of my clients were millionaires.

I cooked for a few older adults who needed help after an illness and a few other men looking to get healthier, who were not rich. When I started branching out, I realized that working for people with cheap knives made the job way harder.

It was also around this time that I met my husband. When we moved in, I shifted gears from the steady diet of sandwiches and cereal that I ate as a single person to cooking more meals for us. I wanted to bring my skills home to impress my new love and make us feel more like a family.

My husband bought me my first good knife the first Christmas we were together, it was a Henkel chef’s knife. It was high-end and professional.

I really felt grown up after he gave me that.

I soon realized I could not cook by chef knife alone. I needed at least a paring knife and something serrated, so I got in touch with a Cutco representative through the website and bought a set of Cutco knives.

Cutco is a company that sells through direct selling and they employ a lot of students. But my sister had bought a set from one of her students (she is a teacher) and was impressed with the quality. They have an outstanding cheese knife that I’d used many times at her house, and I loved it.

I had a demonstration, got to look at and handle them, and I was sold. The company is rock solid; they have good guarantees and warranties and have been around forever. The price is fair for what you’re getting, and there are sets to suit every price point.

I ordered a set to round out my collection plus four steak knives.

I’ve been using these knives for 16 years and have never had a problem. They’ve stayed sharp and intact, and I use them regularly.

I worked as a personal chef for ten years, and these knives came with me on every job. I took them to England when I went over with my husband when his mother had cancer.

Cooking was my contribution to the family. It was my way of freeing up everyone just a little more so they could worry less and make more memories in those last days.

I took my knives because when we went over just after we got married, I didn’t take them, but I’d wished I had.

Even though my husband’s parents didn’t let me cook as much as I’d offered, when I did finally convince them to let me cook a few meals, their dull, flimsy knives turned that labor of love into a frustrating chore.

They’d gotten the knives free for signing up for a magazine subscription years ago. They’d never been sharpened.

I couldn’t believe they’d been using them for all of those years. Cutting with them felt like using plastic children’s toys to me.

Unfortunately, my husband’s parents fell into the English stereotype for cooking, but I can’t help but wonder if they’d have done better if they’d had the right tools to make the job easier.

It’s hard to take an interest and improve upon something when doing it is difficult and frustrating.

So your knives need to be of good quality. Invest in them once, and they will last a lifetime. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you only really need three, so if you’re on a budget, invest in these.

You need a chef’s knife for chopping, you need a paring knife for small jobs, and you need a serrated knife for delicate tasks like cutting fresh bread or tough jobs like cutting big pieces of meat.

If you invest in the best that you can afford, you will have everything you need to make cooking much more manageable.

It will help if you learn how to sharpen the ones that will require sharpening, but you can also take them to a kitchen supply store now and again if you don’t want to do it yourself. Sharp knives are much easier to work with than dull ones. The only one I sharpen regularly is my chef’s knife.

If you only have the money for one good knife, I am going to make a shocking recommendation: get a good cheese knife.

Yes, you heard me.

I use my cheese knife more than any other knife I own.

It’s light and shaped so that it can also work the same way a chef’s knife does for chopping.

The blade is fat so you can get sound chopping action, it has the holes so you can cut cheese or anything else that is soft and it won’t stick to the knife, and you can do big or small jobs with it.

I always reach for it first, whether I’m cutting cheese, vegetables, or meat. I even use it to cut bread and buns because it has a serrated edge. It’s light and convenient.

If I were still cooking professionally, I’d take all of my knives to a job, but for home use, I get by mainly using this one.

For things too big for the cheese knife’s width, I use my chef’s knife, and I use my paring knife when I need a sharp point or a tiny blade.

It seems unlikely, but that cheese knife is the hero of my kitchen and the one knife I would choose if I had to grab one thing to take from a fire.

I also have one tiny paring knife that I got from Pampered Chef that I always use.

It is smaller than the Cutco one, lighter and handles better.

It can do intricate cuts, it stays sharp, and the end is nice and pointy. I’ve had this knife for over ten years, and I use it every day. It’s still sharp and works as it did on the day I brought it home.

There’s hardly an everyday job I can’t handle between the cheese knife and the small paring knife. If I had to choose only two knives to use for the rest of my life, these would be the ones.

I also have a smaller sized chef’s knife, but for me, it is a useless hybrid of the worst of all other knives.

It is too short to be able to chop comfortably and adequately, and it is too big and clunky for the small jobs. It isn’t serrated, so you can’t use it to cut delicate things, and it’s not long enough to get a good run at slicing anything. I don’t like it, I never use it, and it was a waste of money. It’s trying to be everything, but it ends up being nothing.

Cooking for a living made me realize the importance of good knives.

Any chef will tell you they’re like a second set of appendages.

Their knives will probably be their most intimate possessions and, for some their most valuable. You end up having a relationship with them.

When you buy a knife, it’s almost like how Harry Potter’s wand chose him. You hold a bunch of them and feel nothing, and then you’ll get one in your hand, and there it is. It tells you it’s yours, it just feels right.

When you have knives that feel good in your hands, are sharp and decent, cooking is so much easier.

You can do different jobs with ease and get better at honing your skills because cooking becomes more enjoyable and less frustrating.

Cooking is a great creative outlet, as well. If you’ve felt like you need more creativity in your life, why not try cooking.

There is a lot of room for experimentation and expression if you just get to know your materials.

There’s such satisfaction in being able to cook a delicious meal from scratch. Being able to shop within your budget, take what you can afford, and transform it into something that you’d easily pay three or four times more for in a restaurant is so gratifying.

Knowing that you’re taking care of your family’s health and finances in the most fundamental way possible is also something that can be a game-changer and immensely satisfying.

Famous chefs and brilliant home cooks aren’t any different than you. They’re no better, and they weren’t born with any more inherent skill than you; they developed an interest and chose to learn.

So even if you don’t have the time to invest in becoming a master, you can still learn how to cook. Along the way, you may find yourself mastering one of the most underrated and yet essential skills of our time if you put a little time and energy into learning the basics.

If you’re not sure where to start to get your journey going, try looking at your knives. They might be what’s holding you back.

Thanks so much for reading!

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