I am a professional chef (in western cuisine), and my knife kit that I take to work every day has three knives,
- a good chef's knife ($270 if I'd bought it separately, but I got it through my culinary school in a package deal)
- a good paring knife (around $40 if bought separately)
- a not-so-great but does the job bread knife that I should really upgrade.
The rest of the knives, you don't really need unless you do what we like to euphemistically call 'protein fabrication' in schools, which is a general term for gutting, skinning, fileting, boning, and butchering either whole animals or large cuts into portions.
The only other knife I use at all is a carving knife. You don't need one of these, but if you host large parties with roasts, they're nice to have for carving turkeys and slicing ham and so on. If you only have a turkey once a year on Thanksgiving (or less than that for those not in the U.S.), just use your chef's knife for that too.
I'm not actually into Japanese cooking so much so I'm not quite sure what the proper term is for the mid-sized blade that in America we call 'santoku', but a 8-10" one of those serves every purpose a chef's knife does and can replace one. You don't actually need a western blade for western cooking and an eastern blade for eastern cooking, they serve the same purpose and aren't -that- different in shapes.
You will, however, really notice the difference in quality. A high quality knife holds an edge for much longer and can cut much better at its sharpest. You should hone your knives on a honing steel every day that you cook, and sharpen them once every two or three months if you're cooking one meal a day. (I hone mine after every couple hours of use and sharpen them once a month or so.)
Ceramic knives need a different sort of care, I've heard a few contradictory things but don't really know. I've never seen one in actual use in a professional kitchen.
On a separate note, if you grab NTKTV's application you can get free access to NHK-E, which means you can watch cooking shows, mostly きょうの料理 which is sometimes interesting and sometimes not so much.
PS- one place your Japanese knife might differ - some of them are only beveled on one side, and so should only be sharpened on one side, though the other side should be gently honed held almost flat to the steel. Some Japanese knives are beveled on both sides, and can be treated like western knives, but I don't know the particulars on which names go with which type of edge.
Last edited by SomeCallMeChris (2011 October 24, 11:42 am)
