Yes, you read that title correctly. We are boycotting, rejecting, protesting the use of, and generally shunning chef’s knives, or just as appropriate, chef knives. Chef knives out, I say! Except for me, because like so many Americans, particularly the unvaccinated, unmasked, and uninformed of which I am none, I’m special.  Please keep in mind I have no formal culinary training, no background in knifeology, sliceology or dicematics, and no experience as a professional cutter. But like those who have no medical training and very little common sense who insist on making up their own facts while still believing the pandemic is a hoax designed to get microchips implanted in every human by way of the vaccine, not knowing anything about knives is no reason not to spread my truth about knives.

Chefs, particularly famous, celebrity chefs much more so than the relatively unknown celebrity chefs and definitely the ones who if they don’t sell knives at least use knives, all say if they were stranded on a desserted island, not to be confused with a deserted island, and they could have only one thing in all the world, they would want to please be allowed to keep their chef knives. Of course, if they were on a dessserted island they would need their knives to prepare something sweet. If they were on a deserted island the one thing they would want would be a ticket back home, price is no object. That’s what I would want too. Anyway, getting back to the desserted island, personally I believe I’d want a whisk because whipped cream goes best with sweets, and there is just no way you can slice or dice heavy cream fast enough to make it light and fluffy. Again, just my opinion.

Those who really know how to use a chef’s knife, the chef, can go ahead and use it to their heart’s content. They don’t tell you that they are big, heavy, sharp, and unwieldy to wield if you haven’t been trained in their use. They then compound it and say to get the most out of your chef knife you need a big one – a 12 incher, or at least 10 inches.  Even the girl chefs, hmm women chefs, umm, even the chefs who identify as anything other than male with male parts down there will argue that size does matter. They flash their foot long 4 billion dollar carbon steel machete on television where the camera angles deftly screen from view most of the blood, then when you try it at home where you don’t have a staff of twenty doing the real work, you find yourself plucking the tips of the fingers of your non-dominant hand out of the stir-fry ingredients.

Save yourself the embarrassment of yet again explaining to the EMTs where to find the cooler and zip top bags for ice for the trip to the emergency room and stick with a Homecook’s Knife, also just as appropriate, the Normal Knife. I think with a well balance, well sharpened, reasonably priced utility knife, you too can prepare meals your family will think are just dandy. If you happen to be exception at home cookery, like I am (again, just my opinion – no, that’s a fact), you could step into the world of responsibly chef knife ownership.

You see here my personal knife collection. That’s it and I make almost every meal I eat. No, seriously, really I do. So far this year I have eaten other people’s cooking about 24 times and it is September. That’s a bunch of meals prepped.

So then, this is my working cutlery. I use a short, 8 inch chef knife when I get all cheffy and decide to use it and then it is mostly for fine dicing, there’s nothing better than it for chopping green onions and chives, and I like mincing herbs and smushing cloves of garlic with it. Sometimes I put extra garlic in things just so I can pound the living daylights out of them with the side of the…. umm, but I digress. I’m sure somebody who owns 6 restaurants would laugh at it but then I actually know how vaccines work because I really did go to school for that. Below that is a 7 inch utility knife, the workhorse for my cutting and slicing, something you will never see on a televised food competition. Both of those are Vitorinox and they get honed after each use and sharpened only when needed. With the utility knife I can cut most anything from produce to poultry and with its thin blade I can even skin and filet fish. The paring knife is another frequent visitor to the cutting board and is an OXO product. The serrated knife is by El Cheapo and almost never comes out of the block but every now and then I need those teeth.  The whole kit and kaboodle, including a good honing steel and kitchen shears cost less than $150, about half of what the famous guys will spend on their one necessity for Dessert Island. Which reminds me, maybe next week we’ll talk about whips. Balloon whips for whipping eggs and cream for crying out loud! (Sheesh)

Now that we’re done with stuff I don’t know nothing about, on Tuesday I will be getting my vaccine booster shot because I am immunocompromised. If for some ridiculous, completely unscientific reason you are unvaccinated, and you don’t intend to ever at all vaccinate, would please be so kind as to wear a mask while you read my blog posts. Thank you very much. Big chef knives were sent here by aliens.