One goal that I achieved in 2021 was to cook more; as you might have noticed, three of the last four tutor columns I have posted have been about cooking.

It was partly out of necessity; being stuck at home during the second wave of the pandemic early last year meant that restaurants were out of bounds, and I realised that if I wanted to taste a broader range of dishes I would have to learn to cook them myself!

Overall I would say that it has been a total success - some dishes that have gone down particularly well with my family include Tex-mex tacos and burritos (although apparently they always get eaten before photos can be taken because I can’t find any evidence of them on my phone), coca-cola maple-mustard glazed gammon, which came out with a lovely texture inside and lasted three meals, bacon and sweetcorn potato chowder, ramen (although I don’t enjoy boiling pig bones for 12 hours), the roast pork belly I have mentioned in a previous post, and pork and prawn gyoza, which might be my personal favourite as they don’t take too long to make but taste fantastic.

One thing that I have discovered through all this cooking, however, is that I don’t have any really good knives. I can get a good sharp edge on them, but it doesn’t last very long at all, and I find that I end up sharpening them almost every time I need to use them - this is particularly noticeable when I come to make salsa for the tex-mex, as I have to chop a lot of tomato, red onion, jalapeño and coriander, which is much easier to do with a properly sharpened knife.

For this reason, I have been looking at buying a Japanese chef’s knife - they have a reputation in the West for holding a sharp edge very well, and lasting a long time as long as you treat them well and don’t do anything silly like try to cut through bone.

The problem is - which knife to buy? If cost were no object I would simply buy a complete set, but as I am only intending to buy one knife (for now at least) I need something fairly versatile that can do most of the things I need. From my initial reading, it seemed that the knife for me was the santoku - a knife designed to be able to cut meat, vegetables and fish, and one that supposedly combines the qualities of the gyūtō meat knife and the nakiri vegetable knife. However, after further googling I have found that quite a lot of people feel that the gyūtō is better as an overall kitchen knife, and that if you only intend to buy one blade for use in the kitchen, the gyūtō is the one to buy.

I was planning to buy a Masutani VG10 Santoku, but now I am not so sure.

What do you think? Which knife would you choose for yourself? Leave a comment below, or book a Conversation and Correction lesson if you would like to talk more about knives or cooking, and tell me about your goals for 2022!