There are various types of kitchen knives that are used to help with the cooking process. Each knife has a different function in slicing and cutting ingredients.

Creating delicious food is the dream of everyone who works in the kitchen. But people often think about the freshness of the ingredients or the selection of the right spices.

People don’t really pay much attention to the types of knives they use. Every single one of them is treated as equal or just the same. As a matter of fact, it can affect your comfort in cooking.

As a result, choosing the wrong type of knife will interfere with the cooking process. If you want to learn cooking techniques, getting to know the different types of knives and their functions is essential and important.

List of Different Types of Kitchen Knives and Their Functions

Knives are one of the essential cooking tools in the kitchen. Its use is to process various kinds of food ingredients, from vegetables, meat, fruits, to spices, the taste of the food is perfect.

However, most people only use 1 or 2 types of knives in the kitchen. In fact, to handle certain ingredients, you need a different type of knife.

In other words, perfect cooking requires good-quality cutting tools. If you want to know more, here is an explanation of the types of kitchen knives and their functions.

1. Chef’s Knife

A Chef’s Knife or commonly known as a multipurpose knife is a type of cutting tool that is commonly owned by everyone in the kitchen.

This type of knife is used to peel vegetables, cut fruit and meat. In addition, the main feature of the Chef’s Knife is that it is about 15-30 cm long.

However, this type of kitchen knife has its drawbacks. Chef’s Knife because it is difficult to use to cut hard processed materials such as bones.

So, you need the help of other types of kitchen knives to handle this one material.

2. Paring Knife

A paring knife is a type of knife that is smaller when compared to Chef’s Knife which is only about 10-17 cm.

The paring knife is used for peeling fruit, opening the skin of shrimp, and chopping up cooking ingredients such as onions and other types of spices.

Its small design and size make it easy for you to cut food ingredients more flexibly. Not only for peeling fruits and vegetables, the paring knife can also be used to carve the shape of food ingredients as decorations on dishes.

3. Bread Knife

As the name implies, the bread knife is intentionally designed as a knife to cut bread or cakes. The distinctive feature of this knife is the texture of small serrations on the cutting part and its long shape which is about 12.5 – 30 cm.

The design of the bread knife is made to keep the shape of the bread from crumbling when cutting and provides a smoother and softer cut.

In addition to bread, the serrations of the bread knife can be used to cut vegetables to produce a smooth skin texture such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggplants.

4. Chinese Cleaver

Unlike other types of kitchen knives, the Chinese Cleaver has a square shape with a more robust, wide, and strong design so that it is able to chop and cut meat and bones more easily.

The Chinese Cleaver type of meat-cutting knife is known as a ‘machete’ in Indonesia and has a size of about 18 cm. It is able to chop thick meat to cut bones like chicken more optimally.

In addition, some people also use the Chinese Cleaver to grind the ginger and garlic spices more precisely than using other types of knives.

5. Kitchen Scissor

Finally, another cutting tool that also has a function that is almost similar to a kitchen knife, in general, is the Kitchen Scissor or often called Kitchen Shears. The main function of this tool is that it can cut packaging or cut food ingredients into smaller sizes more simply like green onions without the need for a cutting board.

Those are 5 types of kitchen knives and their functions that you need to know to make the dishes served more special. So which knives do you already have?

After you have all the necessary knives, do not forget that you need to maintain it and keep it sharp all the time. As people say, “dull knives are more dangerous than sharp knives”. If you are not sure how to sharpen your knives, fret not. Pantry Magic has Knife Sharpening services using Machine Sharpener from F-Dick Germany. You can leave the knives or wait for the process and bring it home on the same day.