Knifery for Vegans

If you're serious about plant-based nutrition, you will soon end up learning more about knives too, for there is a lot of cutting involved in preparing various vegetable meals. Not to mention, I even like to make my oatmeal look pretty, and when I have strawberries I halve them or quarter them. More reason to use knives.

There was a time when I thought that a knife was a Sabatier knife, and I have had my set for forty years. They are always still a good choice, but I have learned to look beyond. For about thirty years, I had a set of MAC knives, which are still my favorites for cutting vegetables and fruits, because they are so razor sharp and very thin.

MAC Original Series, set of 3

If you want to treat yourself, I would strongly suggest a set of the MAC knives. They are not overly expensive, and they are hard to beat for preparing vegetables. My only beef is that the paring knife has a bit of a wide blade and is not too convenient for working off the board, purely in your hands. For that, I prefer a narrower blade, which my Sabatier paring knife and a closely similar Wüsthof do better.

Another good option can be ceramic knives, although they have limitations, but the good ones stay sharp almost indefinitely, and they are very sharp indeed. I have a set of Kyocera Revolution knives, and I love them for the right task. The paring knife is too wide, and like the MAC paring knife, I find I can only use it on the board, not in the hand, like for peeling an apple or a potato. You can't use them on the side to flatten your garlic or some such, for you will shatter the blade that way, they are very brittle. As long as you stay within those guidelines, they are a very useful option to have. Try it any time for slicing tomatoes, and you will never give them up again. For some tasks however, I actually prefer the weight of a steel knife.

Kyocera Revolution Fruit knife

If you have the patience to learn some new cutting techniques, a Japanese style nakiri knife (a vegetable cleaver), or a santoku knife are very versatile options, but especially if you get the single bevel variety, there's some learning curve...

Kamikoto knives, yanagi-ba, nakiri, and utility knife

Once you get handy with the single bevel knives, you will tend to make some other kitchen gadgets superfluous, for instance I find myself using my mandolin less often. I can slice a celery stalk in paper thin slices with a nakiri-knife in less time than it would take me to do it with a mandolin. For certain jobs a good mandolin is still a winner, but especially the single bevel Japanes nakiri-knife is excellent for slicing thin, or even julienne cuts. At that point my mandolin comes out only when I have a large batch to do.

Then, there is always maintenance, and for that, I got lots of inspiration from Ryky Tran, aka Burrfection on Youtube. Highly recommended. Sharp knives are safer than dull knives! (Except if people are not used to them...)

 

Burrfection comparing the sharpening of an $20 and $160 chef's knife

That was a fun test, showing that a $20 knife could outperform a $160 knife if it is sharpened well. By the way, he is right about the Kuma knife, it is a great buy, even at today's price of $30 - the $20 price was an introductory price when this brand first came to market.