You’re a student not a chef, how many knives do you really need?
BREAD KNIFE
Let’s be real, you’re probably buying sliced bread as it is anyway. But those beautiful serrated blades can saw through anything if you aren’t worried about how clean the cut is. It’s perfect for cutting anything that requires that sawing movement but that’s about it. It’s like the toolkit saw’s younger and less useful sibling. It will cut through a pineapple but it won’t dice your onions or spread your butter.
BUTTER KNIFE
The humble butter knife. A staple in dining cutlery. But for a student on a budget, how many dining parties are you really throwing that don’t involve pizza? The blade could hardly break skin and would take a considerable amount of effort to do so, so it’s much better suited to soft foods. It does however make a mean vegemite on toast with its smooth edges making spreading a soothing experience. But at the end of the day, its prime use is to scrape your scrappy meal into the bin and that can be done with a steak knife.
CHEF’S KNIFE
There is a reason they call this the king of the kitchen. It slices, it dices. It minces and it de-bones. But it also goes well beyond its intended uses. Need to open a bag of spinach? Pop the cap off a beer? It’s gotcha covered. It’s probably the most versatile kitchen knife ever designed. It’s only flaw is that its sheer size makes simple spreading tasks difficult.
STEAK KNIFE
The steak knife is the only sharp piece of cutlery and quite frankly could be the only piece of cutlery (excluding the occasional spoon). Serrated or straight edged, both designs make chowing into that juicy steak (or vegan alternative) that much easier. And if you’re a bit of a risk taker, it’s pointy tip can substitute a fork in many ways. “It doesn’t count if it’s just the tip?” In that case you might require a proper fork.
CLEAVER
This is a goddamn murder weapon. There is no good reason you should own one of these monsters as a budgeting student unless you run a bloody butcher or plan to kidnap your tutors and send their fingers in the post in return for HDs (sidenote: Verse does not condone this behaviour, not to mention there are better ways to blackmail). This knife is so severely sharp and heavy, it is made to chop through meat and bones. And if you’re buying quality slumps of meat like that, are you really budgeting? C’mon.
Words by Bridget Kerry.
Images by Rachael Sharman.
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