Points Huggbees has forgotten: You could be training to be a ninja. You could be training to be a knife juggler. You could be training to be discount Wolverine. The possibilities for needing more knives in endless.

I was agreeing with you until you dissed the pizza cutter. It is objectively better because it's way more fun to use. Look me in the eyes and tell me it isn't more fun to wheel that shit around like a unicycle than to just drag a regular old knife across a pizza. Everything else is fair though. EDIT: Hang on, they make pizza cutters that _aren't_ sharp spinny discs on a handle? Actual fucking scam.

I worked as a butcher for a year and a half and the only additional knife I used was a weighted cleaver that said “Dominator” on the blade.

I actually use kitchen shears for their intended purpose, when I found out you can scissor food, it was like I unlocked a cheat code in life.

I think the near $3000 knife set is mostly worth it, because the handles actually clean your fingerprints off after use, and the blades wash human blood off themselves, meaning they're great value if you have to commit up to 16 murders.

Fun fact, pizza cutters are actually pretty damn good for a lot of cutting tasks mostly related to mincing... but thats just me meaninglessly defending it because i find it funny to call it an italian trench knife

The Gordon Ramsey knife set has 5 actually sensible knifes. Almost as if Gordon had a say in the matter and was like "Cut the crap. I don't want to see any stupid gimmicks in something I put my name on" The second one on the other hand is a disappointment.

Unexpectedly happy to come across this - I've given this same rant before lol. Bought a Mercer chef's knife for about $20, then bought another for my parents, and another for my girlfriend's parents (in no small part so I could use it when cooking over there). No one else has given a rant of their own, but the shitty knife blocks have remained mostly untouched ever since...

i cant stop, every time i go into a store the employees put these knife sets into my cart, i cant take them out. whenever i do the employees eyes turn obsidian black and they start screaming in Sumerian until i put it back in my cart.

Actually, as a high end chef that has worked at Michellin star restaurants, I can tell you, all you need is a chef knife, a pairing/boning knife, and a bread knife. The only exception is if you butcher meat, then you also need a chopper and perhaps a thin flexible long ham carving knife. 99% of the time, you use the chef knife.

The knives with the words "pizza" and "cheese" cut into the blades are also a pain in the ass to clean.

That job interview reminded me of a job I briefly had at 18 where it was introduced as selling insurance, then they wanted me to "practice" with friends and family only to try and get me to get client contacts from my friends and family's contacts. I quit after like a week bc it made me feel dirty

I'm glad you mentioned sharpening, as that's the piece of the puzzle that most people really don't think about. A cheap sharp knife is SO much better than 6 dull knives

Anyone who says: "I'm a professional chef so I need 30 knives" is just defending their knife hoarding habits, a key identifier as to finding out whether someone is a chef or serial killer.

I recently inherited around 40 kitchen knives, it was bittersweet cause I was sad to lose a relative but my family all noticed I like cooking so they said I should take the knives. And I’m happy I did but I have to admit I only use one of them for 90% of everything I do. It’s a small chefs knife with a silicone handle. It fits really well in my hand, it’s not so long as to be awkward to use, and it curves into a point at the end which makes continuous slicing much easier than the knives with straight edges. I really only need one knife and it’s far easier to only have to clean one.

I used to be a professional chef for many years. In knife bag you would find 9-in chef knife, boning knife, paring knife, bread knife, nakari (small vegetable cleaver), yanagiba (sushi knife), a honing steel and two custom specialty knives and an extra vegetable knife. So in total I had 10 pieces of kit but 70% of the time if not more I only needed my chef knife. Now that I don't cook professionally anymore I use three knives mainly. My chef knife, my nakari and my boning knife. Maybe every now and then I feel like making sushi and bust out my yanagiba, or if someone's over and they want to help me in the kitchen I will hand them one of my extra knives. Truthfully no one needs a knife set that you would find from a department store. This is what I would recommend... A couple of chef knives (in case you have someone helping you in the kitchen), a bread knife, a paring knife, and a good quality honing steel. No one should need any more than that unless you get really wild with your cooking like some of us do but even then you can do almost everything with just a chef knife. You definitely don't need a half dozen steak knives because in all honesty if you need a steak knife to cut meat then you're doing something wrong. When I cook steak, chicken, or pork you can cut it with a butter knife or just the side of your fork. So yeah 100% agree with this video.

"i am a shame to my family, and i think it's finally time to turn this santoku knife into a seppuku knife" is a beautiful quote

For as long as I can remember, we have had this knife block with 5 knives. One chef's knife, two serrated knives (one longer one shorter) and two paring knives (again, one longer and one shorter) and it was helpful for us kids who hadn't developed our hands fully and couldn't properly grip the longer knives handles. We still have them because they still function and haven't killed anybody yet.

Hey, year late to this party, I use every knife in the 9 piece set I received after getting married, but I was trained by a chef for a lot of years, and at one point was a sous chef, as you pointed out I'm an exception. I even use a filet knife which wasn't brought up for fish and trimming fat off of larger cuts of meat. The knives are terrible quality but I'm also poor, a debilitating condition for which there is no remedy. I use like 60% of them every month, because the sheer quantity of steak knives renders half of them useless. Utility knife though, very helpful for anybody that only has one hand, it can cut through things when a person can't hold something in place.

Currently a chef. Yes, most knife sets are pretty dumb. Get a magnetic rack so you aren't wasting counter space and buy knives individually as you need them. However, everything isn't universal. My knife roll at work has three knives right now: my fancy chef knife with the japanese handle, a reliable wurstoff as a backup chef knife in case something happens to my fancy one, and a good bread knife. If I had unlimited spending money, I would add two. A small utility knife (takes the place of a paring knife. Fuck paring knives, a small utility knife does the job better, and that job is just 'any task for which my chef knife is too big to be reasonable'), and a really big chef knife with a thicker spine that I would use exclusively for cutting up cheese wheels. Because my comfortable chef knife is slightly smaller than average and every time I break down a giant block of peco I worry for my and it's safety a little. Also, pizza wheels are just good, sorry man. Nobody got time to meticulously cut a pizza with their chef knife during service when you can grab the spinny boi and go zip zap zoop serve the pizza.

Raised in a family of chefs and when I moved out at 18 they got me a knife set. Kinda joked about it because it had been mentioned how garbage they were multiple times, and they said 'good job' and pulled out 4 very nice chef quality knives that was the actual gift. Been using them for 15 years now and while I initially kept the steak knives from the set they quickly ran through their useful lifespan.

I was a chef at the Ritz Carlton for several years and I can assure you that, although I had an entire knife roll for appearance purposes for guests, the only knives I ever used were my chef knife, paring knife, serrated knife, and on rare occasions, a boning knife. That's it.

My sister got me a knife set when I first moved into my new place and I had barely any utensils, and while it is more knives than I need, I still end up using most of them fairly regularly, just because I like how the different ones feel to use for different tasks. Like, yeah, I only _need_ one chef's knife, but the thinner one feels better for chopping onions, while the biggest one feels best for cutting a roast.

Oh god that Cutco callback. I threatened legal action against Cutco because I had like 4 different people harassing me to join them through calls, texts, and emails. “If I get ONE MORE request from you people for an interview I’m going to the police and filing against YOU PERSONALLY, the next individual who does it personally, AND the company for harassing a MINOR (I was like 17 at the time).” That shut them up real quick. I’m assuming he’s talking about Cutco, given he talked about Publix (a Deep South company), my familiarity with how Cutco acted, and the pitch.

As an ex-professional chef, I agree with most of these points. I would actually encourage getting an offset serrated knife rather than a traditional bread knife though, they let you use a serrated knife on tricky to cut things like tomatoes without bashing your knuckles against the cutting board.

I live in a very Italian family, so we cook a lot (practically every meal). My grandmother (the best cook in the house), has well over 20 knives in her “knife drawer”. While she makes the best food I’ve ever had, I never understood why she has so fucking many knives. Whenever I come home for the weekend, I always just used the same exact knife (unless it was in the dishwasher) to cut whatever ingredients I need to cook for my meal, and I did not realize until after I watched this video that my knife of choice is a 5” Santoku knife. This is the most normal I’ve felt in 12 years.

Having multiple of each knife type is useful if multiple people cook though. Like on holidays, maybe 4 people in my family will be helping cook and make all the sides and stuff. Each person having access to the right knife type can be nice. Also I thought one of the upsides of getting a knife block is that they have like 6 steak knives - it can be nice to bundle those with the knives used for cooking and have a nice-looking place to store them all.

I actually use kitchen shears to cut sheets of seaweed but otherwise I gotta agree with this. I bought the most basic knife set I could when I moved out that only had, like, 5 knives and I still had a redundant amount of knives

As a chef, I can't agree more, I would add a filé knife to your three knives collection though, and maybe a meatcleaver for fun and feeling like a badass. And for you who are not experienced restaurant workers, the difference between cheap knives and expensive knives are not that expensive knives are sharper, ALL knives are sharp when you buy them, the difference is that expensive knives tend to keep their edge better when used ie they stay sharp for longer thanks to being made from higher quality steel.

As a knife maker/collector, you couldn’t be more right! 3-4 pretty nice knives will be much better than 20 cheap knives. Personally, I recommend a paring knife, a chefs knife, a boning knife, and a serrated knife. Obviously, this doesn’t also include steak knives and butter knives, because those are things you need multiple of if there is more than one person.

We're a simplistic lot, we use whatever knife appears first when we open the knife drawer. Then its a gamble if we keep our fingers or not

I'm a professionaly trained chef. Even I rarely reached for anything other than a chef's knife, bread knife, or paring knife. Sometimes a peeler, but that was about it. I'm now out of the trade, and I tell anyone that'll listen, that all you need is one of those three knives. And don't ever be suckered in by anyone who demonstrates how sharp their knives are. ALL knives are that sharp when new. What matters is how long it stays that sharp, which is something can't demonstrate. Also, the grip is important. Don't ever go for those all metal ones. You will get grease on your hand, and you will slip. Victorinox are cheap enough, they stay sharp, and have a good grip. No real need to get anything else.

I got a three-set of knives from Aldi. A chef's knife, a santoku, and a pairing. All three have their own covers that are also sharpeners. I don't think it was even $20 and the weight is surprisingly decent for what I would find in the sub$50 range. A great impulse buy, I felt very much the accomplished adult for that one. I also have a bread knife I took from a job because they weren't using it and I was tired of finding places to store it there. I did get a cleaver from one of my local Asian stores. It's for when I need to work out homicidal urges in a controlled and legal manner.

I used to be a chef for almost 10 years, my knife set consists of the exact same 3 knives, which I relieved from my last position. With the blessing of Chef de Cuisine of course, because I had been using those knives for like 5 years and they were sharpened down to like 70% of their original size and he didn't want to give them out to the next person.

Real as hell. Had an applied food lab aka cooking class last term. We made 7-9 recipes for 7 labs. We only ever had chef knives, pairing knives and serrated knives.

When I worked at a casino we gave out lots of prizes to gamblers earning points. During a week in December we could buy any leftover prizes for $5 each at the end of our shift. That was the only knife set I ever bought and will defend that purchase, my first apartment got a toaster oven, a knife set, a blender, and crockpot for $20.

I went to buy a fancy knife set when I moved into a new place with my girlfriend at the time. She convinced me to instead just buy a chef's knife, a serrated bread knife, and one single steak knife. Turns out that's all I ever needed, they each have their purpose, and as it turns out I only ever needed one steak knife anyway a few months later.

The “And when a knife is pointless, that’s not a very good knife” is such a smooth line

You had me till the pizza cutter😂. Thats one of the most used knives in my house. Edit wait i thought a pizza knife was the round one you roll over pizza for a smooth cut... wtf is that thing?

This video influenced me when I was moving out of my parents house. I was ordering a bunch of stuff before I moved, and my parents wondered why I bought a magnetic knife block and a 3 set of knives from Babish, and I told them that "These are all the knives I need." I also bought like a box of random kitchen tools for like 30 bucks, one of which is a pathetic pizza cutter, which I pretty much threw out right away since the chef knife does a way better job.

This sounds SCARY familiar. As someone who worked for cutco as a salesman for 2 weeks. Luckily I did it during Covid since it was completely online so I never had to leave my room. I completely agree. Yes, pyramid scheme job, overpriced sets, borderline scam. Products are good quality but, waaaay overpriced and 75% of the knives in the biggest set could be used for everything, you only need like 3.

Agree, I have a 12" chef's knife for big stuff, 7" Japanese vegetable chopper, victorinox paring and serrated bread knives.

As a guy that sat through that same training for that same knife selling job and knew it was just as weird and not really as exciting as they wanted me to, but was also needing the money and figured it was something I could easily schedule around my class schedule and living in a college town with a ton of young couples and new families, it would be a good way to help support my family while finishing up my degree, I can say that the truth is somewhere between what you said here and what they wanted me to say in my sales pitch. I never tried to sell the 15 or 18 or 24 piece sets. I was always pushing the basic set, which had a couple different sized serrated knives, a chef knife, a paring knife, and maybe one or two other things. Adding a set of steak knives or a pizza cutter was usually worthwhile as well. I was able to sell enough to cover nearly a semester of college, and to qualify to keep my demonstration knives once I finished with the company. I don't use all of them often, basically the big, heavy butcher knife, but there are 7 or so that I use regularly. As a parent, washing my knives after each meal isn't always feasible, otherwise I'd need less. I do, however, really wish I had a good cheese knife, as sliced and cubed cheese is crazy expensive, and a good cheese knife absolutely makes a difference. Most importantly, pizza cutters are amazing, and not just for pizza. I use pizza cutters as much as, if not more than, any of my knives. You clearly are either lying or ignorant in your dismissal of pizza cutters. They are indispensable in any kitchen. To wrap up, you're not quite at a normal amount of knife usage. 3 is too small a number for most homes. But 10-20 is way more than anyone needs. Those that cook a lot know better, and it's those that cook just a little that typically get pulled into the knife set trap. Hopefully, most people watching this don't go full on anti-knife like you, but do think a little more critically about their options before purchasing something unnecessary.

I'm a chef and a knife nerd. Expensive knives are a flex, that's it. I paid over $100 for my chef's knife and I only did so because I stare at it for dozens of hours a week and liked the way it looked and felt. It's not 5 times better than a $20 great value knife, even if it is significantly better. Also, yeah, even in my line of work, 90% of what needs to be done can be accomplished with a paring knife, a chef's knife, and a bread knife. I keep a cleaver, slicer, fish knife, oyster knife, and a boning knife around for specialized tasks but I doubt the average home cook is going to need to break through beef bones, de-fat an entire primal, or filet a whole fish. Additionally, I have a nakiri and a petty knife, but only because I wanted to learn how to use them, and the former is basically a chef's knife that's better at rapid straight chopping but worse at drag slicing and mincing, and the latter is a 50/50 cross between a boning knife and a petty knife. Useful, but not so much for the home cook.

I asked my aunt for an 8 inch chefs knife last Christmas. I was very specific that I wanted a single knife instead of a bunch of cheaper knifes. When I got a knife set that Christmas I went out the next day and bought myself a 45$ chefs knife because I coundt even cut a tomato with those things.

I actually got a Wüsthof set from my boomer parents as a wedding gift. I understand the futility, but at least it forced me to study up on the use of the different knives and with two children I’m not complaining about it. It made me a better cook because I had to justify its existence.

I'm 70; my mom died when i was 13. She had a wooden tray that slid out under the kitchen cabinet with an assortment of knives. Of those, I occasionally use the bread knife. My dad had a couple of those tray box knife sets of the kind you might see advertised in tabloids - top shelf, still unused. I have a "favorite" knife - a small paring knife with a partially melted white plastic handle. Also from my mom, and the knife I use for nearly everything. Best "tomato knife" ever. I think my dad gave me a Bowie knife when I was a kid. That seems weird. I don't keep it in the kitchen, though.

Thank God I never seen a knife set in my life, I grew in a household with 2 chef's knife and a bread knife that were so resistant we even used to saw a tree once.

As an ex fine dining chef I agree with every point you’ve made. You only need these 3 knives to do every job in the kitchen. The only other knife that is optional at this point is a filet knife if you’re a fisherman breaking down whole fish often. The rest of it is just fancy stuff for special occasions. a cheese knife if you host guests for wine and cheese, a carving knife to carve the turkey on thanksgiving, and steak knives if you host guests often that may need them to cut meat. Any other knife is bullshit for home use.

I've always felt like I was too poor or something for only owning a bread knife, paring knife and chefs knife. this video redeemed me lol

My family goes through all the steak knives a lot of the time because often, we’re too lazy to do the dishes every day. I use the other knives in the set specifically when my father is watching to make him feel inferior to me.

The only cheese knife I would ever own is one purely because I found it amusing every time I saw it at my friend's place. It's literally a tiny cleaver. I only noticed it when we'd gotten a couple of boxed things and I was looking for the knives to cut the tape on the boxes with. I found that, thought it was funny, and decided to use it when he noticed and said "you know that's a cheese knife, right?"

As a professional chef, I can say: the only use of the knife block is to keep out so no one else I live with uses my good knives to open a can 👍

I'm the personal chef of a family of 30 and I have to say I can't sleep at night until I count all 135 pieces of my knife set.

well forgive me for arming my house with effective close-quarter combat weapons

I agree with the vast majority of what you said. Especially the 2 barely different sizes of each set. Though I got a very reasonable set that is just 6 different knives (Chef, carving, bread, pairing, utility, and santoku) and 6 steak knives. That being said I love cooking and love cooking for large groups so I do tend to use all of them at least a few times a year. The carving is more my go to than the chef's just because it's more practical, and when carving a ham or a turkey the thinner blade makes it easier to change angles around bones. With the chef vs santoku I tend to rock the blade for veggies but drag it for meat. So if I'm only cutting one or the other which does tend to be the case a lot, I'll use the one that's better for that task. Utility knife is my go to for things like tomatoes and cheese blocks. I keep it nice and sharp and while yeah, I could use a chef's knife. It's just a lot bigger and a lot more knife than I need for something like that. I live in a small apartment where kitchen drawer space is at a minimum, so having the block that looks really nice and keeps everything organized was a big plus. I'm a big outdoors person so I looked for a set that was good looking, nice ergonomic handle you can use for a long time without it rubbing or straining the hand (I use the pairing knife for literally 6=8 hours a time during canning season prepping apples and pears), with a nice quality stainless steel that holds it's edge really well and only paid like 70-75 bucks for it. 3 years later of just regular sharpening and they're still serving me great. Something like a 19 piece set is insane. My little set with the 6 knives and the scissors (those are my go to scissors for everything just because they are nice and I always know where they are lol) is very practical if you're actually going to cook a lot but aren't into it enough to justify a professional set.

Along the same line of thought: You don't need a full set of pans. A solid frying pan, a big pot for boiling water, and a sauce pan will cover the overwhelming majority of things you'll make. A good wok would also be a good choice, as it can be used for a lot of things including deep frying. Everything else in the set of pans I bought has gone unused or incredibly rarely used for the ~5 years I've owned them. Edit because I didn't word my original post that well: I'm saying this is a good starting spot. If you want to branch out from there later as your cooking journey demands, go right ahead, but I've found that 3-4 *good* pots/pans will do so much more for you starting out than a full set that's most likely cheap garbage. I've added things as I've gone along since this post, but it was meant for people starting out.

I bought a $500 knife block/set in 2001, I was in my intro phases of being a professional chef. To this day I literally only really use the chefs knife and the paring knife, I did include shears at one point. My man Huggbees is dead on correct with this video!!! keep it up man and thanks!!

I was given a bunch of random knives eons ago as a hand-me-down, and I almost exclusively use my kitchen knife. Only extra thing I've got extra was buying some kitchen shears because sometimes you just need some snippers and dirtying a knife plus board isn't as ideal (like cutting bacon into bits is a lot easier imo). I've been considering buying a cleaver though because sometimes I need a larger surface to move veg around.

20:51 I'm sorry, but if that company figured out how to make Damascus Steel, I feel like selling it on Amazon isn't the best thing to do with that recipe.

As a person who only uses a katana for all cutting and slicing purposes, I agree.

I used to be a sales representative for CUTCO marketing and my second appointment I had with a customer they blew over 1k on a knife set so I now understand how it happens

Loving the ASMR around the 1:30 mark, it really felt like I was being dragged by the scruff of the neck to your kitchen during an argument to prove a point. Subscribed.

When i worked in a kitchen, making maybe 800 servings of food or more, id only use two knives, and half the time it was the wrong knife, a bread knife. They were never sharpened. Didnt matter, i made shit work

7:40 I had a feeling I knew where the story was going. Out of all of the MLM schemes out there, Vector is definitely the weirdest in terms of what they’re selling. Like, you could convince people to buy a bunch of essential oils, even clothes isn’t too much of a stretch, but knives? I’m not convinced you could have repeat customers with that product.

I had the exact same "interview" experience with the knife presentation where they cut the rope, and the payment plan sketched me out. Problem: if you walked in the room, you were hired. I told them I wasn't interested and they still kept calling me to schedule my sale shifts until they eventually gave up.

My entire arsenal of knives is as follows, a Chinese cleaver that does the bulk of the lifting around my kitchen (it's my stand in for the chef's knife) $20, a Cutco butchers knife that has good weight near the tip allowing me to get through bones or half frozen meat with relative ease $45, a bread knife $8, and a partying knife I made myself by taking a rusty knife I found in the ground, cleaning it up, and cutting off half the blade $0. I agree on this one, you don't need much. One general purpose, one or two specialty knives, and a short blade for dexterous work.

Haven't you seen the true crime dramatic reenactment deadpool2? A knife block is critical in defending your home from a failed assassination target and his pals.

About 10yrs ago, my best friend came to my house selling me a knife set. He was so proud of himself because that was his first job he got. My family (who only buys cheap stuff) told him we won’t buy them because they were too expensive. I always wondered about that job he had and then after watching this video, it made sense, since my best friend had like multiple knife sets he had to sell

So I was a Resident Advisor during my college years. After everyone had moved out and we were starting our final room checks, I found a set of three kichen knives (chef, serrated, and paring) left in a drawer unopened. The resident lived way out of state. She told me she wasn't coming back for them and that I could keep them if I wanted. If you're expecting some kind of inspiring story from an exceptional chef, you're in the wrong place. Yes, I kept the knives; no I've never needed a different knife; but I am a notably terrible cook.

I know this is a year old, but you neglected to mention the buzzwords and marketing terms they use to sell you something garbage while convincing you it's high quality. You almost touched on it when you mentioned the "cutting rope to show how sharp it is" demonstration (most conmen gouge into the corner of a display cutting board instead), but they'll throw terms around like "surgical stainless steel" because it evokes the image of a scalpel, something that's incredibly sharp. Or they'll take the serrated knife and tear chunks out of a block of wood with it just to immediately pull out a tomato and cut the skin off it with minimal flesh loss. What they *won't* tell you is that "surgical" steel is just the term used for literal garbage steel scraps. It's like "military grade," but for kitchen knives. You get whatever junk they found when forging (more likely stamping) your blades. Sometimes you get lucky and end up with some half-decent alloy but most of the time you get nothing of quality. And of course the serrated knife can take chunks out of wood and cut a tomato -- it's serrated, making it basically a saw, and saws can essentially cut anything even if they're very dull because they aren't cutting so much as they're tearing into something. You want the real test for a sharp blade, make them pull out a piece of paper and examine it after it's cut. You can tell if it was torn by the blade rather than cut with it pretty easily.

I have a 9pc set including scissors. I use the chef's knife, paring knife, bread knife, and scissors. The scissors are nice to have because I cut things with my normal scissors that I don't want near my food. Otherwise, great video.

I went to a vector marketing "interview" on a lark because a friend of mine actually worked with them because he was bored and said it was a hilariously bad scam. It was exactly hilariously bad. Motivational posters everywhere, shitlords in suits pumping people up on how much they could make if they grind. It went to the "personal interview" with 3 people at a time and I just outright said "nah I'm out" because I stopped having fun. To this day my friend and I hope "but it has that special double d edge". Good shit

I'm in culinary school and the first hour of the first class I took, the chef said everything in a kitchen can be done with a chef knife. This video is so true and god damn I hate knife blocks especially ones with steak knifes.

i agree with you wholeheartedly. there’s just one necessary i’d personally add, which is a nice thick cleaver. they take a lot of the pain out of cutting joints and such.

For four years I only used a utility knife and a bread knife, boom saved you 33% on that Walmart purchase

As an ex-butcher, I used only 2 knifes for 99% of my work and all of my home cooking. Unless you're working in a kitchen you'll never really need more than a paring knife, chefs knife, and bread knife.

As an avid knife-user outside the kitchen, I live by this rule: it's way easier to do little knife things with a big knife than to try the opposite.

I'm a kitchen manager. We have 5 knife types in the entire kitchen: chef's knives (7), bread knife (2), santoku (1), utility (1) and many MANY steak knives for customers. We, kitchen staff, don't even use the santoku, bread or utility knife. The FOH staff uses them for cutting lemons, cutting bread, etc. TLDR: The cooks use one knife, a chef's knife.

Got away with just a pocket knife for a year, meanwhile family member crying about being poor buys a ridiculous cutco set, and later admits "I only use my one favorite"

That story about a group interview sounds EXACTLY like what happened to me when I applied at CutCo. It was listed on Craigslist as just "Full time sales position. No experience required", with no mention of the company name anywhere. At the presentation, they expected you to just go door to door trying to sell REALLY expensive knives, until you had built up a network of clients to constantly badger and make home visits to. No guarantee of any pay whatsoever, and you had to purchase the knives yourself to re-sell them, but the walls were lined with pictures of the top first-year earners with the exact amount they got paid, to convince idiots they can get rich being a door to door knife salesman. There were only like 6 other people getting interviewed in this big room with 40 or so chairs, and they all seemed completely and utterly clueless as to what was going on or where they were, except one person who was clearly WAY overqualified. The whole thing felt like a weird dream.

About a few months ago I discovered that the table in the dining room had a secret compartment that housed like 11 knives. I never knew my parents even had that many knives or even why they needed that many knives.

Our family's knife set: Chef's Knife - Daily 2nd Smaller Chef's Knife - Every Other Day (We'd often have multiple people cooking at once) Santoku Knife - About Every Other Day (Multiple People Working At Once) Cleaver - Every few days for cutting cabbage and other heavy vegetables and shit Bread Knife - About once a week Fillet Knife - Once a month after a Costco haul to butcher a tenderloin or fillet some fish Pairing Knife - Daily Steak Knife (*8) - Daily. They're our Go-To Meal knifes Cheese Knife - Every other day, easy for snacking, but honestly the steak knives usually worked just fine in most situations

In my parents' house, we had a separate knife for cutting fruits (long handle, short blade) because you could cut medium sized fruits very easily wherever while only using our hands and no chopping board. Less chance of getting cut. Other than that, we had a knife with a serrated blade (not like the bread knife, more like that tomato knife) that looked and worked like a chef's knife that worked great. And yes, it also cut tomatoes pretty damn well.

This honestly made me look at knives online myself. Interestingly Binging with Babish sells cooking supplies, all at reasonable prices. And even a 3 pc knife set, using: (you guessed it) A chefs knife, bread knife, and a parring knife.

The only knife I would recommend in addition to the 3 you talked about would be a cleaver. Cutting through bone wears the chef's knife down pretty quickly, so the cleaver is better for handling those tasks. Otherwise, you're spot on. The only reason I have a knife set is because it was gifted to me when I moved out of my apartment. And guess what, I almost exclusively use the chef's knife for everything and one steak knife for eating. I keep it sharp and it keeps my food small and in my stomach.

Non chef here, different knives have different blade shapes depending on your style of cutting. Get a good one and stick with it, theres rocking knives, chopping knives and slicing knives. Different sizes also make a massive difference, try peeling a potato with an 8 inch chefs knife, conversely, try cutting up a rib roast with a paring knife. Try cutting bread with a smooth knife, I can go on and on, i also have a smaller serrated utility knife that came with my set that is perfect for cutting cheeses, and i looove my cheeses. But if you intend on using them, then get them. Ive had my knife set for 6 months, a zwilling 4 star 7 piece set. I use each and every one of those knives on a near weekly basis. Plus, it came with a pair of kitchen shears that can crack walnuts and cut through just about anything. It also came with a sharpening stick (get one of those and learn to use it instead of those ceramic knife sharpeners, those aint it) so I keep every single one of them tip top sharpness. I used to work as a butcher though and I only used 3 knives, but when youre only cutting meat, you dont need all the variations of knives in existence. Perhaps im the exception but if youre a home cook, youre not limited to a set menu of dishes like a professional chef is, so why limit your tools? Plus the knife block does look classy on my counter. I guess to each their own but nothing anyone can say can make me regret purchasing them. Granted I did a ton of research before purchasing them and picked the one that I knew would be perfect for me, as a general rule, dont buy the first one you see, do your research, make sure the knives are full tang and forged instead of stamped and dont buy sets to gift to others since the knives they get may not be good for their style of cutting or cooking. I dont have a santoku knife, dont need one and dont want one I also have a lifetime warranty on the set and they sent me a free paring knife extra as a thank you gift for leaving a review on their site. Thank you Zwilling! The only other knife I have isnt even a kitchen knife but a smith and wesson double edged hunting knife that I keep in a sheath between my mattress and bed frame in case I ever have to deal with an intruder

my family had a knife set that had a chefs knife, one or two other knives that i forgot the name of, and like 6 steak knives. We would use those steak knives to cut up our meat when we had family meals, since butter knives couldn't, so there are a few situations where a specific knife set is helpful, but the generic knife sets are so useless we never even consider different ones

When I first watched this video (around 6 months ago) I was using roughly 30% of my ten piece knife set. Now I use about 100%. Wanna know why? Because I threw away the useless 7 knives. Huggbees. You didn't save me money, as I had already bought the ten piece knife set. But you made me feel significantly less like a dumbass, after I got rid of the useless ones.

Your MLM scheme experience reminds me of my own shady business experience. I remember they tried to pump us up by saying the job pays X amount a week, but they were paying us Y amount a week instead as a little extra. Quick math told me the "little extra" was just legal minimum wage, and I interpreted that as "we would pay you less if we could" and I was out.

No chef will ever want you to buy a set they'll ALWAYS recommend 1-3 knives unless they're trying to sell them to you

I’m now questioning the choices I’ve made in my life that brought me here… where I’m enjoying a single man’s rampage over knife sets for over 20 minutes.

The "knife set" that I purchased when I got my own place consists of exactly 3 knives. It's been 2 years since and I still have yet to ever find myself in need of any more than those 3 basic knives.

I can confirm having worked at a place with a kitchen. There were two types of knives. They had chefs knives, and they had bread knives. That’s it. They had like 6 of each. Never heard anyone complaining.

I work in a bakery, I slice bread with my chefs knife, I score my vienna's with a $5 serrated pairing knife, bread lames are a scam. My santoku knife actually gets a lot of use at home for doing finer slices for like let's say chives, idk knives are weird. Most of the time they're absolutely useless. If I had to use one knife for the rest of my life 100% the serrated pairing knife.

I pretty much use a utility knife for just about anything I cut in the kitchen besides big things like pumpkins or watermelons. I also use my shears quite often for yes, opening packages, but also cutting herbs and sometimes cutting meat. A long time ago (like over 20 years ago) I bought one of those sets, but since then, I have pretty much just bought the shears, a pack of steak knives, and several cheap utility knives. I also bought a bigger knife for larger vegetables. I think I still have a few pieces of that set from over 20 years ago though, but not the block.

I was like "hang on I bought a knife set and I use all of them!" Then you said "15 piece knife block" and I was like "ohhhh OK." I bought a set of 4: bread knife, chefs knife, paring knife and utility knife.

I use like 90% of the knives in our families’ knife set, but that’s only because they’re all different sizes of chefs knives and we’re cooking nerds who hate doing dishes. Funnily enough, the only ones I don’t touch are the cheese knives and the ones that mysteriously showed up after someone went to a restaurant

if you look closely you can see him literally foaming at the mouth at some points of this video over kitchen knives lol

Most of the people I know who bought knife sets did it for the steak knives and a place to put them. But they also need multiple table knives for multiple people. Not everyone lives in a box under a bridge and throws rocks at visitors. Some actually have people over occasionally...