Category Archives: Buying Guides

How sharp are your knife skills? No, we’re not talking about how you actually wield a knife, but instead about your knife knowledge. If you’re uncertain regarding which knives you need to execute all of your favorite recipes, you’re not alone. With so many options, it can’t be hard to keep up. We’re making it easy for you with this handy cheat sheet of four must-have kitchen knives for every home or professional chef.

1. The Chef’s Knife

Every professional chef’s best friend, the classic chef’s knife is the definition of “versatile.” According to Institute of Culinary Education Chef-Instructor Brendan McDermott, a chef’s knife in the 8- to 10- inch range is ideal for a whopping 90 percent of all day to day kitchen tasks. Slicing fruit? Dicing vegetables? Carving chicken? Trimming steak? A chef’s knife can do all of this and more. Whether you’re a beginning chef in search of a starter knife or a professional chef looking to upgrade your collection, the right chef’s knife can make-or-break your prowess in the kitchen.
One last tip? Reserve the largest portion of your knife-buying budget for a top-quality chef’s knife. When chosen well and with proper care, it can last forever.

2. A Serrated Utility Knife

While cutting bread may be the first thing that come to mind when you think of serrated knives, they’re good for so much more than that — and shine where knives with smooth blades fail. Whether you’re cutting into a juicy peach or tomato or slicing through fatty meat or a sandwich, a serrated utility knife allows you to pierce and penetrate tough or waxy exterior without damaging the more delicate insides. The end results are not only better, but the work is easier: serrated knives require less downward force meaning reduced effort for you, too.
One task for which serrated knives aren’t suited? Chopping. Serrated knives should only be used with a sawing motion. Leave the rest for your chef’s or paring knife.

3. A Paring Knife

Paring knives may look like pint-sized versions of chef’s knives, but they’re anything but. While chef’s knives are multipurpose, paring knives are very specific in their use: they’re ideal for all delicate kitchen tasks which require precision. Coring an apple? De-ribbing a jalapeno? A paring knife makes short work of these jobs, as well as other tasks which are simply too small to be handled by a larger blade.
A caveat? Because paring knives are lightweight they aren’t ideal for slicing small hard veggies, like parsnips and carrots. If you can’t pierce without applying pressure, you’re using the wrong tool.

4. A Honing Steel

Your knives are only as good as the condition they’re in, and knives which are not well maintained are useless. Over time and use, blade edges curl, causing knives to become dull. While not technically a “knife,” a honing steel is an essential part of any knife collection because it helps keep the blade in alignment. Contrary to popular misconception, honing — or sharpening steels — do not actually sharpen. However, they do serve a very important role in keeping your knives in good condition between sharpenings.

Whether you’re buying a complete knife set or planning on gradually adding to your collection, it’s also important to keep one last thing in mind. While these four listed above are the usual suspects on roundups of must-have knives, they’re far from the only options out there.
Butcher your own large cuts of meat? Then a cleaver is in order.

Frequently work with fish and other delicate proteins? A filet knife will come in handy.

Host family gatherings and parties? A carving knife will see you through from the slicing meat to cutting melon.

Shuck oysters? Oyster knife.

And the list goes on. The truth is that that every chef’s ideal knife collection varies depending on their own cooking styles and preferences. As you continue to refine your cooking skills, your knife needs will change and evolve. So before asking yourself, “What knife do I need?” you might first consider the question, “What kitchen tasks do I need to accomplish?”

One gram or one teaspoon here or there can sometimes have a serious impact on a food. Just imagine the sticky mess that can result from adding just a drop too much water to a dough, or the awful taste of pepper spilled into soup while attempting to eyeball the amount added. I’d say most of us have been there, done that, and ended up tossing our hard work. One of my serious considerations for going to culinary school, as opposed to pastry school, was that I don’t have the patience to meticulously measure out every ingredient. And on top of that, there’s the different measurement systems. There’s no escaping the recipes in grams and milliliters, nor pounds and cups. I was drawn to the idea of knowing the ingredients so well that I could eyeball the amounts. Yet there are some things that are just not eyeball-able, but rather require measuring tools to be used.

By Cup and By Weight

Cups come in all different shapes and sizes, yet recipes demand a standard that can be guaranteed only by measuring cups. The customary cup in the United States is under 240 milliliters whereas the metric cup is 250 milliliters, a slight, but sometimes important difference. The United States and Britain have yet to transfer over to the metric system which the rest of the world follows. The disparities in the systems can cause confusion abroad. Admittedly, knowing that the weather is 18 degrees Celsius means nothing to me, despite having lived abroad in a metric-using country for quite some time. And if you ask me my height in centimeters…well, I have no idea. Thankfully, there are scales which measure both British and Metric units. And for that stick of butter needed in grams, or those liters needed in cups, thank the internet. The biggest challenge in playing with unit conversions in recipes is in converting volumes to weights. One cup of flour is not equal to one cup of water when it comes to weight. If the proper measuring cups are not available, a little research will need to be done, which can add preparation time and hassle.

The Solution

The solution to the mix-up and complication with measuring cups, weights, and units is to have the proper measuring equipment on hand. Measuring cups and basic scales are not expensive and will often go a long way in helping create new menus, improve food quality and quality consistency in a venue, and simplify the cooking and baking processes for employees. As an added bonus, measuring equipment such as scales and measuring cups can also be used as food portioners for ensuring uniform dish sizes for each order and allowing exact calculation of profits on each dish. When having the proper equipment is not an option, conversion charts can be used. These can either be printed and then hung somewhere in the commercial kitchen or, if they are rarely needed, employees may take a break to look up the conversions on the internet. Venues can also convert their recipes to match their measuring equipment. If a recipe calls for one stick of butter, but the butter in a venue is purchased in bulk and not wrapped by sticks, the recipe can be reprinted as calling for 4 ounces of butter, rather than one stick.

The metric and British systems cause complications when it comes to unit conversions. However, these complications must be dealt with and overcome in the kitchen, in order to produce the best foods. Just a tad too much or too little salt can have a big effect on the diner’s portrayal of the dish and the kitchen staff’s food preparation skills. Though experienced cooks are likely to get it right, some dishes demand exact quantities to turn out great, making it important to have the proper measuring equipment on hand. Very experienced cooks may know that one ounce is about 28 grams, or that to convert Celsius temperatures to Fahrenheit, you must multiply the temperature by 1.8 and then add 32. Some may be able to calculate or estimate such conversions in their head, but for the most part, these switches are a challenge, not only for kitchen staff, but for cooks worldwide and in general. Aside from the solutions suggested above of having conversion charts, purchasing the right measuring equipment, or converting recipes to fit the tools in a specific kitchen, venues may want to have a kitchen calculator handy in order to avoid innocent mistakes and recipe mishaps. Following these tips will help make food preparation simpler and more consistent in a venue.

I was once working in an upscale hotel kitchen, and they required all their kitchen staff to wear tall chef hats while on shift. Though tall chef hats can appear very impressive, they were not very practical. Every time I opened the door to one of the walk-in fridges, my hat would be blown off by the powerful fans. On the other hand, in culinary school we wore baseball caps as cooking hats. The advantage was a more comfortable to work with fit, but the main disadvantage was that the visor would sometimes get in the way of seeing everything that was going on around me in the kitchen.

The decision of which chef hat to require workers to wear should be a balance between utility and aesthetics. On the one hand, it should be comfortable for workers to do their day to day tasks, while not having to worry about their hair getting into the food. On the other hand, customers are likely to glimpse the chefs, making it important to have some kind of uniformity and aesthetic look to the chef hats. Chef hats are usually required according to food business regulations, so choosing the right ones is very important. This guide provides an overview of a few of the options often used.

Toque Hats

Toque hats are the most often used, and most common hats that come to mind when thinking of chef hats. Toque hats are usually made of disposable paper and white, and are tall and stiff. In short, that inconvenient hat I wrote about in the first paragraph of this article: that was a tall toque hat. Toque hats can come in two difference forms, with one type being tall and stiff and the other more floppy. The tall and stiff ones are offered in different heights and sizes, and offering a few different types in a venue can (…Read More…)

The perfect dinnerware is always a struggle to choose when entertaining, at home or in a restaurant. There’s a tension between making an excellent impression with fine china, and preventing the potential loss of a plate or too, by offering plastic or melamine dishes instead. Home cooks often choose to go with fine china when looking to impress, but for businesses, there is more at risk, with a statistically higher chance of financial losses when using fine china dinnerware. For food businesses, it is obviously more attractive to use ceramic or glass dinnerware, such as china. However, when serving kids’ meals, or for very casual venues, it may be worth offering nice plastic or melamine dishes instead, in order to save costs and hassle. But what really is the difference between these different materials?

Melamine

Melamine is a chemical used in many different types of industries. In the food industry, it became a choice material for tableware in the late 1950s. It’s lightness, strength, and resistance to cracking made it an attractive alternative to ceramic dinnerware. It was used to make plates, cups, and serving utensils. However, sales have gone down since their peak in the 1960s, due to the material’s tendency to stain and scratch. Scratches in food preparation and serving equipment are a notorious harvesting ground for bacteria. But the health concerns associated with melamine go beyond the scratches. There has been suspicion that the material may contaminate foods with melamine, which has been found by the Food and Drug Administration to raise the chance of kidney stones, kidney failure, and even death above certain levels. Luckily, only very low levels of melamine were found to leak into acidic foods in extreme heat conditions. What this means for food businesses today is that melamine dinnerware can be an appropriate and cheap option for fast casual venues and for serving kids’ meals, but should be used with caution and switched often in order to address the aesthetic and health concerns appropriately. It should not be used for serving very hot foods or in the microwave.

Plastic

Whereas melamine plates can be a cheap, hassle-free replacement for china, good quality plastic plates can offer a shatter-safe alternative for glass plates. Most plastic dinnerware is made of a material called polycarbonate, which can come in scratch-free varieties. Hard plastic can be hard to differentiate from glass, providing an attractive plating option. However, plastic plates may get scratched and/or “foggy” over time, and will therefore likely have to be replace on a semi-regular basis. Hard plastic dinnerware is dishwasher safe, providing an extra convenience over fine china. However, in order to prevent chemicals from seeping into food, it is usually recommended to avoid heating the plastic plates. It is also important to make sure to purchase BPA-free options. BPA is a carcinogenic compound found in some plastic products. Overall, plastic can be compared to melamine as an inexpensive and convenient alternative to glass, ceramic, and china dinnerware.

China

Fine china has a reputation for being a lot fancier than your typical plates. However, it is made from ceramics, similarly to the most common restaurant plates that are used. The difference is in the quality, expense, and fineness of the dishes, with fine china often being breakably and beautifully thin, with intricate detailing. Fine dining restaurants tend to offer their meals on china, and accordingly, the dishes will usually be hand-washed and hand-polished before being deemed fit for service. Restaurants offering such plates should budget in the added costs of purchasing and replacing such dinnerware, since accidents are pretty much guaranteed to happen. A single fine china plate can easily cost a few hundred dollars, making it a main cost when starting up the venue and maintaining it. Yet the expense can be worth it for upscale dining locations, with a noticeable impact on the restaurant ambience. For other, more colloquial venues, ceramic plates with beautiful shapes and in a variety of sizes can provide a basis for aesthetic and contrasting food plating, doing the job at a lower price.

It’s fair to say that melamine can be compared to plastic, but it would be relatively unreasonable to compare those two to fine china. Fine china is in a whole other category altogether, but can be compared and contrasted with ceramic dinnerware in order to make purchasing decisions. The right purchase depends on the target customer group, the type of venue, and the business’s budget.