Your Expert Guide to Knives, Sharpening & Kitchen Blades in the UK
There’s a moment every home cook recognises. You’re halfway through a pile of courgettes, your old chef’s knife is dragging and sticking, and you think: there must be a better way. There is. It’s called a santoku — and once you’ve used a good one, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it. The best … Read more
You’ve stood in your kitchen — or scrolled through Amazon.co.uk at half past eleven — and thought: do I actually need a better knife? The answer, almost certainly, is yes. But the real question is which kind. The German vs Japanese chef knife debate is one of the most enduring in the culinary world, and … Read more
There are few more demoralising moments in the kitchen than watching your lightweight, bargain-bin knife bounce off a butternut squash like it’s made of rubber. You press harder. The squash laughs. The knife bends. You consider ordering a takeaway. This is precisely when a heavy duty chef knife earns its keep. So, what exactly is … Read more
Nobody warns you about chef’s knife fatigue until you’re twenty minutes into dicing a swede for Sunday lunch, forearm aching, wondering why a piece of kitchen equipment is making you feel like you’ve been arm-wrestling a Wüsthof rep. A lightweight chef knife is, in plain terms, a knife — usually somewhere between 150g and 220g … Read more
There’s a peculiar kind of frustration that only tall cooks know. You’re standing at the worktop — six foot two, hands like a wicket-keeper — hunched over an eight-inch blade that makes you feel like you’re trying to chop a butternut squash with a penknife. Every rocking motion is cramped. Your knuckles graze the board. … Read more
There is a knife sitting in most British kitchen drawers right now — slightly dulled, handle a bit wobbly, bought in a bundle deal about four years ago and never quite right. You know the one. And then there is the 8 inch chef knife you should actually own: the kind that glides through a … Read more
There’s a kitchen truth nobody talks about at dinner parties: most home cooks are quietly suffering with a rubbish knife. Not dramatically rubbish — just a blunt, unbalanced, slightly-too-flimsy thing that makes slicing an onion feel like an arm workout. It sits in the knife block looking the part, then lets you down every single … Read more