Kitchen knives are to me what wands are to witches and wizards in Harry Potter. Not every knife fits every person. You have to be comfortable holding your knife. Preferance for size, shape, weight, balance, metallic make-up all vary from cook to cook.

Really, for the home cook, you only need three knives: A chef’s knife, a paring knife and a serrated knife. And the latter two can be cheap–in price and quality. (And if, for some reason, you don’t eat fresh crusty bread, then you don’t even need the serrtated one.) Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to me, so I end up spending lots of money that probably seems ridiculous to you. But I do like sharp, shiny, pointy things.

I have recently purchased three new knives. I already posted on my new chef’s knife. The only problem with it, is that it’s too large to keep on my station at work during service. So I bought a utility knife which I use as a service knife to do little a la minute jobs–like chiffonade parsley, trim down protein portions and cut pasta sheets. It’s the same brand as my new chef’s knife (Kikuichi) and almost as expensive, but didn’t come with a wooden sheath. The manufacturer calls it a boning knife for some reason. Maybe this is a mistake in translation or maybe they like to make boning things hard for themselves in Japan. 6″ and is carbon steel sandwiched between stainless steel.

Next up is the Wusthof Cruster Buster serrated knife. The fucking this is a called a Crust Buster! It’s 10.5″ inches long and is shaped like a curved chef’s knife for maximum busting through of crusts with minimal effort. $60 with free shipping from Amazon.com. It pretty much rules.

Finally, we have the slicer. Used to, um, slice through meat. Called a sujihiki in Japanese. Using my chef’s knife to make pretty slices out of dozens of portions of meats a night was clumsy and awkward. Kinda like using a toilet wand to brush your teeth. As expensive and the same length as my chef’s knife (9.5″) and obtained from Bowery Kitchen. It’s fucking dreamy and cuts like a hot knife through butter. Using it brings a big shit eating grin to my face.

On knife care: It seems like everyone has an opinion on how to proper care for you knife: Some people hone it on steel before every use (which I don’t). Some people say to never use a diamond honer (which I do). Some people say to never use a honer and only use a sharpening stone (which I use once a week). I find it’s like masturbating–everyone has their own technique to get to the same end.

Alton Brown brings his knives (he is the spokesman for Shun brand) to a professional sharpener, which I was bummed to learn because he’s usually a big D.I.Y. guy.
Now I just have to figure out how to properly dispose of unwanted knives as it’s probably illegal to just leave them on my stoop like people do with clothes, books and old electronics. Anyone have any information regarding this?

Electric kettles are a must if you love hot beverages. I would say ours gets turned on about a dozen times a day. Every Brit, Scot and Irish has one in their kitchen because they love tea as much as they love a pint. I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on here (except in hotels).

This dealie heats up water in seconds and frees up your stove’s burners. The best thing? It’s for the forgetful. You turn it on, leave to do some other shit and it turns out automatically after it comes to a roaring boil.

Alton Brown uses his to make hard boiled eggs in. We use it for our coffee (recently switching from drip to French press).

Now you are probably going to say, “Chewy, you are smart, funny, talented and beautiful and I’d hate to argue with you, but aren’t those things going to become obsolete when everyone has a Tasso-type machine?” No! Those on cup pod machine things are amazingly fast, but they won’t make you a proper cup. Water for coffee should be heated to about 190 degrees F and water for green tea should be heated to about 165 degrees F.

$10 from Amazon.com* (as pictured). They have $60+ Braun ones, but that’s a jack. Why pay six times more for something that just heats water? I guess if you are a sucker for designer names and chrome, but you shouldn’t be reading this blog if you are like that, anyway.

*Right now, they have a promotion at Amazon.com where if you buy four selected kitchen gadgets, you get one of them for free. And this electric kettle is in the deal. I’ve already taken advantage of it twice.

The Braun Multiquick has been my favorite kitchen gadget since I got it three years ago. For $28 (now priced at $35) it’s been my mixer, mini food chopper and submersion blender: A tri-tasker!

Some of the things you can do with it:

• Fine chops garlic, onions, nuts, etc. in seconds
• Grind spices
• Whatever one does with an electric beater
• Purée soups
• Make smoothies
• Make salad dressings
• Make tapanades, hummus, salsa, etc.
• Make someone fall in love with you

Things I wish you could do with it:

• Control the television
• Send and receive calls
• Use it as a carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time
• Be a time machine

The image above is the 400 series model I own. In the future, I hope to upgrade to the spiffy chrome 5000 series, 5-speed one for $63.

Pros:

• Comes with a wall mount
• Comes with the pictured measuring dealie
• All attachments are dishwasher safe
• Small and easy to store
• Cuts down on prep time
• Cheap
• Awesome to the max

Cons of the 400 series:

• Fixed speed (insert hipster bicycle joke)
• Immersion blender will want to suction itself to the bottom of the vessel
• The whisk is flimsier than a real mixer’s beater - but screw it - I don’t bake so I don’t care

I say it’s the best appliance that you aren’t going to buy because I’ve been raving about it for years to anyone who will listen, but no one else I know has gotten it. It’s only $35 and that’s not even the amount of money it costs to go out drinking for a night. I guess it’s not worth $35 to make your life easier and cut down on kitchen clutter. Suckers. Go back to your Wish-Bone Zesty Italian dressing and get out of my face.

Braun Multiquicks on Amazon.com