Your First Good Kitchen Knife (My Recommendation for Home and Pro Chefs)

I highly recommend anyone invest in their cooking by buying a good knife to prepare meals. This does not mean spending a lot of money on a knife block from the local cutlery store. A quality chef knife is the workhorse of prep and great options can be had for $25. More importantly a well maintained inexpensive knife will blow away a poorly maintained expensive one.

I recommend the Victorinox fibrox 10" chef and mercer renaissance 8" chef as the first knife due to their comfort and high quality materials and construction for the price. The F Dick Eurocut honing steel is a must to keep these going at peak performance day-to-day and should be purchased along with the knife. For smaller jobs any paring knife will help take care of smaller jobs and the Victorinox 3.25" paring is inexpensive and works great. In the long run, all knives will dull and a proper sharpening will be required so a King 1K stone with some stropping compound will bring back a razor edge.

After learning how to properly use these tools you will develop preferences and can then start investing in other products to replace or fill in gaps. Of course these could be the last knives you ever buy because they are that good!

Tools:
Mercer Renaissance: https://www.knifemerchant.com/product...
Mercer Genesis: https://www.knifemerchant.com/product...
Mercer Millenia: https://www.knifemerchant.com/product...
Victorinox Fibrox: https://www.knifemerchant.com/product...
F Dick Eurocut: https://www.knifemerchant.com/product...