Drum roll please

[cjsmith]

I am now the proud owner of a second nonstick skillet* large enough to brown a pound of ground turkey. Being able to run two of those at once during a cook-for-the-week session is going to be a real win for my tender feetsies.

So far I have learned two lessons with my new skillet:

1: It takes a lot longer to cook stuff if the pan takes a lot longer to heat up.

2: Scraping the meat to one side of the pan and tilting the pan to drain off the fat is downright awkward if your skillet is slicker'n black ice. The meat keeps sliding around!

I am also the proud owner of a garlic press. I am getting more frou-frou by the day. A garlic press! *eyeroll* But by golly I am going to get over my fear of using stuff that grows in the ground as opposed to stuff that comes in jars. (I reserve the right, however, to go back to jars due to the economics imposed by waste. How fast do I have to use up a bulb of garlic?)

____________________________________
*Those of you who wish to argue that my first large skillet is no longer nonstick will get a fair hearing. I've clearly eaten a lot of Teflon over the years.

Comments

[lrc.livejournal.com]

My absolute favorite cookware is Le Cruesette (sp?) they've got an outlet in Gilroy. It is enameled cast iron. Nearly as non-stick as teflon, easier to clean, nearly as tough as cast iron, with the even heating characteristics of cast iron, and easier to clean.

The outlet store has really good prices, with progressive discounts for each piece (including lids) that you buy. If you get one of the "seconds" with good discounts, you can end up getting a $150-200 skillet for $70.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. Mine isn't Le Creuset, but then, I spent $22. At Safeway. :-)

What I do want to do, though, is get a couple of decent knives. That's even higher priority than the skillet (the skillet was just there, and easy). Working with my knives is like trying to slice an onion with the edge of my hand. I'm hoping for something that could chop chicken or lettuce with equal ease, dishwasher-safe, and in the low two digits.

[brooksmoses]

I've been very happy with my Tramontina knives; they're a bit less expensive than the German ones (they come from Brazil), but no less high-quality. The first one I bought came from a cooking store where I could try out several different brands and see which one fit my hands right and felt like it was naturally balanced. The second one came from ... some mail-order place that sells only a handful of brands, but which came up on Google when I searched from Tramontina.

I'm not sure there's such a thing as a dishwasher-safe cook-quality cooking knife, though. (But, then, really you don't want to leave them dirty that long anyway.)

[brooksmoses]

125 West seems to be the relevant store, incidentally. They've got free shipping, and the sort of good-quality service one would hope for from the sort of frou-frou sort of place they're trying to look like.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Nice! Thank you. That 6" utility knife looks just about perfect. Maybe a bit short for a head of lettuce, but a good shape for a general purpose knife. I'm almost afraid to ask, but those look to be wood-handled -- are you supposed to hand-wash them? (I'm one of those complete goofballs who think *tools* are here to serve *us*, not the other way 'round. I don't grok why people keep putting wood handles on knives. About leaving them dirty, though, I'll just say that my dishwasher runs a lot more frequently than my hand-washing gets done!)

[brooksmoses]

The 8" is the first one I got, and the 6" is the second one I bought. If you'd like to handle them at some point, we can probably arrange that.

The handles are high-grade plastic, not wood, so they're fine in the dishwasher. The problems (as I understand it) are more that dishwashing a knife tends to bang it around a bit, which dulls the blade. As for hand-washing, the habit that I've tried to develop is that, when I'm done using the knife, I immediately wash and dry it and put it up -- I don't wait until I do the rest of the dishes. Since it's just one knife, and nothing has dried on it, it's just a matter of a couple of sponge-swipes to clean it, and not the significant effort that "hand dishwashing" usually is.

In any case, the worst that the machine-dishwashing is likely to do is dull it a bit more quickly.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh, nice! I can arrange to have the knife in its own separate section, so that the worst it'll get banged against is the plastic bin that keeps the silverware out of the washer's mechanism. That might at least help.

A couple of swipes with a soapy sponge does seem easy, too. O'course, I now have most of my (icky) knives in a crusty ever-growing pile awaiting sufficiently high motivation from me. Heh. Oops. :-)

[lrc.livejournal.com]

I might be able to help you there too.

I literally have a drawer full of decent knives. The short story is that I'm a packrat with an eye for steel.

I also just bought a kickass electric knife sharpener.

We should have you and Rob come over for dinner some evening.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

What makes a knife decent, other than ability to hold an edge? That's the only criterion I can come up with, and sadly, it's one I can't judge.

One of these days I really ought to buy one of those long plain sharpening steels (or even a stone). Oddly enough, I know how to use one well enough to get by, but I haven't had one for years.

[lrc.livejournal.com]

A steel doesn't actually sharpen the edge, but with use the edge will get bent over, and a steel helps keep the pointy bit straight, so that you're cutting with the edge and not a folded over edge.

The quality of a knife depends on its ability to both take an edge and to keep an edge. There is also build quality, such as will the handle stay on?

Then there is the applicability to the job that you're trying to do. If you need a paring knife, a 10" chef's knife won't do a good job, likewise if you're chopping vegetables, a paring knife won't do as good of a job.

There is also a small amount of technique on how to use a knife.

Zab never really believed in the utility of sharp knives until she cut up some onions (that had been kept in the fridge) with a professionally sharpened knife, and it didn't make her cry.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

If it doesn't sharpen the edge, it's not what I want. I guess a whetstone, then.

Size and shape, yeah -- it's too bad you can't get one transformer knife or something. Multiple knives take more washing, more storage space... enough with this piddly 20th-century stuff! ;-)

If it makes chopping onions easier, that'd be a big bonus. Onions can send me to my knees.

[lrc.livejournal.com]

Steeling the edge is necessary, but not sufficient. You don't want to remove material everytime you use the knife. You grind the edge to put an edge on, and you steel it to keep it sharp.

I just bought:
one of these (http://www.amazon.com/Chefs-Choice-Professional-Knife-Sharpening-Platinum/dp/B000CSK0DM).

It's quite possible that some quality time with your knives and a good sharpener would do wonders for them.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I hand wash my good knives right after using them, the steel them before putting them away.

Once a year I take them The Perfect Edge Cutlery (http://www.perfectedgecutlery.com/) in San Mateo and have a new edge put on them. They have a 24-hour turnaround.

A good chef's knife and a good paring knife are all the knives you *need*. An nice boning knife is a bonus. Learn to steel them properly, have them professionally sharpened once a year, keep them out of the dishwasher, and they'll last for years and years.

My knives are Japanese. They fit my small hand better.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I hand wash my good knives right after using them, the steel them before putting them away. Once a year I [...] have a new edge put on them.

Maybe my shitty knives are worth keeping, purely in terms of workload!

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

You should take them to Perfect Edge and see if they can restore them. They did wonders with an old cold rolled steel cleaver I've had forever and ever.

[ambar.livejournal.com]

I recall that Dittmer's (recommended to you for yummy meats) also has a monthly visit from a knife sharpener. You could do worse than to call them & see when the next visit is --

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

Knives! I have some Globals. They are great, if you exercise proper knifely care (e.g. clean and dry them promptly after use): they hold an edge extremely well, they're very light, and they balance very nicely, at least to my hand. The price range is probably $50-$100. This is more than your stated budget, but my chef's knife is almost a decade old and still in great shape....

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*big grin* My knives are about a decade old, too, and that probably isn't even the worst thing wrong with them. :-) (Heck, the worst thing wrong with them is that I don't own good sharpening equipment. I have one of those stupid little handheld objects with a tiny little pre-set V of sharpening stones buried deep inside it.)

[nosrednayduj]

My experience is any $50 knife is nice. I've had two generations of henckel but my current favorite says schnicken meiss on it. It came free with a box of beef & stuff we bought by mail order. I was underwhelmed with the beef, but the knife was nice. Knives last a long time; don't short on it. Think about amortization over 15 years before whining about the price.

I usually prefer an 8" but a 6" is usable. A friend of mine always cooks with paring knives, even huge things, I have no idea how she manages.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Six months ago I wouldn't have whined for one picosecond about a $50 knife. Now I'm trying to figure out when it is and isn't reasonable to spend money I don't know for sure I have. My crappy knives do still cut things...

[kuangning]

As shocking as it sounds, my current set of knives is this set from Ginsu, and after 6 months of frequent use, I'm still *very* happy with them. So is my roommate, apparently, because she's stopped using her own "good" set in favour of mine whenever she cooks.