Knives part I

It should come as no surprise that the most important pieces of equipment in the chef's bag, are his or her knives. I've been around the kitchen long enough to see a number of really good specimens and some really bad ones. There is one common aspect of a really good knife that escapes a lot of my compadres attention. It's basically that if you care for them properly, you can turn a 5 dollar knife into a legend of the kitchen. The opposite is also true that if you neglect and abuse your blades, you can turn a 1000 dollar Japanese Chef blade into little more than a butter knife. You've got to:
1. Make sure you clean the blade as often as possible, even in the middle of service...obviously if you catch a free second
2. Once you've got what you like as an edge, DON'T RESHARPEN AGAIN UNLESS NECESSARY! Use your steel to reform the edge. Continual sharpening only errodes the edge and makes it harder to put a true edge back on the knife.
3. Try not to let many people use them. A friggin waiter has no business cutting whatever with your precisely honed instrument.

I need to introduce you to my favorite blade currently. I got the thing back in December and it has still kept the edge that it had straight out of the box. I HAVEN'T HAD TO TOUCH IT WITH A SHARPENING STONE! Pictured above is the Mac Superior 6.5 inch Santoku. It's blade is super thin and so sharp it'll julienne hairs man! This style of knife is one of utility so it allows you to do most tasks. Obviously you want to avoid some of the heavier projects with it. The Mac family of knives are fantastic and range in price from about 50 bucks to over 300. I got this baby on chefknivestogo.com for around 50 bucks and couldn't be happier. Since I'm just kind of starting out I couldn't justify spending much more than that. I'm telling you I'd put it up against any of the other companies'(Henckels, Wusthof, Forschener, Victronix) knives and for the value you'll think it was a steal.

Take a look for yourself. Keep-on, keepin on people.