subject: Why You Should Invest In Your Kitchen Knives [print this page] Chopping, slicing cutting and dicingChopping, slicing cutting and dicing. These are just a fraction of the day to day actions of the humble kitchen knife. All across the globe, in different countries near and far there are people using kitchen knives to prepare and serve food, and this is likely to persist for decades to come.
The market for kitchen knives is very busy and saturated, but that does not necessarily mean that all the choice is a good thing. With superstores such as Tesco in England and Walmart in the USA churning out their own brand knives and importing cheap kitchen knives, a false economy is whirling around the good old fashioned kitchen knife, with many people buying into it.
The kitchen knife market is that of a false economy. What this means is that consumers are attracted to buy a kitchen knife (or more likely a set of kitchen knives) because of their low prices. In this case, however, the affordability is misleading, because the poor quality that this money buys you means that you need to replace them every year or two years. It is much more cost effective to invest in a quality set of kitchen knives that will see you through many years.
Unfortunately, it is not just this market false economy that comes from cheap kitchen knives - there is a safety aspect as well. These cheaper knives have very weak blades which can bend and flex when used with even a small amount of pressure. This means that the blade could easily bend out of shape when put under more pressure and cut a finger quite badly. The more established, better forged blades do not suffer from this whatsoever.
As you can imagine, when a blade snaps on these cheaper knives, you are left with a very jagged, razor sharp edge that will actually be sharper than the knife was in the first place. Of course, this knife needs replacing again.
Although the upfront cost is somewhat greater to buy quality kitchen knives (such as Global, Shun, Zwilling/J. A. Henckels, Cutco, Wusthof, etc.), the peace of mind you get from knowing they are not going to break, and will serve you well for decades far outweighs the price difference. In some instances you will be paying more for the brand and label of a good knife forger, but with this comes many layers of tightly folded steel, properly engineered ergonomic handles and decades of experience in the business of forging kitchen knives.
