Kitchen knives

A kitchen knife is any knife that is intended to be used in food preparation. While much of this work can be accomplished with a few general-purpose knives – notably a large chef's knife, a tough cleaver, and a small paring knife – there are also many specialized knives that are designed for specific tasks. Kitchen knives can be made from several different materials.

Steel blades can be manufactured either by being forged or stamped.

The edge of the knife can be sharpened to a cutting surface in a number of different ways. There are three main features:

Kitchen knives generally either feature a curve near the tip, as in a chef's knife, or are straight for their entire length. The edge itself may be generally smooth (a "straight" or "clean" edge), or may be serrated or scalloped (have "teeth") in some way. Lastly, the point may differ in shape: most common is a sharp, triangular point (not pictured), as in a chef's knife or paring knife, though the French point (also called "Sheep's foot") is common in santokus, and a round point is sometimes found on long slicing knives.

Some companies have names for their own serration patterns and apply them to an entire line of knives. Examples are Cutco's Double-D edge and Henckel's Eversharp Pro series.

Away from the edge, a knife most simply has either a rectangular or wedge-shaped cross-section (saber grind vs. flat grind), but may also have indentations, whose purpose is to reduce adhesion of the food to the blade. This is widely found in Japanese knives, and in the West is particularly found in meat carving knives, though also in knives for soft cheese, and some use for vegetables.

These indentations take many forms:

The edge of a knife gradually loses its sharpness, which can be restored by sharpening. For many types of knives (e.g., butter knives) this is not relevant. Knives with smooth edges can be sharpened by the user; knives with any form of serrated edge should ideally be sharpened with specialist equipment, although the useful life of a serrated knife can be extended by simple sharpeners, even if they damage the edge.

The handles of kitchen knives can be made from a number of different materials, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.

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Wikipedia