Wusthof: Two Sharp Chef’s Knives

What is the most important tool in a kitchen? A good knife, if not on the top of the list, is certainly in the top few. Any cook, novice to professional, needs to have a few good knives in the kitchen. Even the New York restaurant hounds with tiny kitchens on staff here at TrulyNet can appreciate the sleek slicing of a high quality blade.

Wusthof, the well-known family owned company, has been designing and manufacturing high-end precise cutlery in Germany since 1814. They have an extensive collection of over 350 different gourmet cooking knifes and accessories. We’ve had the pleasure of testing out two of their Classic Chef’s Knives: the Clas­sic Wide Cook’s Knife (8″)and the Clas­sic Cook’s Knife (6″) in our kitchens re­cent­ly.

The Clas­sic knifes are known for their riv­et­ed polypropy­lene han­dle and full-length tang. The blades are hand-forged from a sin­gle piece of stain­less steel, which en­sures that they are as strong and stur­dy as need­ed for a bustling kitchen. The hand-pol­ished blade is de­signed to be ro­bust enough to re­sist dulling, but soft enough to be eas­i­ly sharp­ened to a very keen edge. We es­pe­cial­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed the ex­tra sur­face and weight on the ‘wide’ mod­el, it’s per­fect for those in­stances where you’re do­ing a lot of chop­ping and want a lit­tle ex­tra room on the blade.

Each blade un­der­goes mul­ti­ple tests to de­ter­mine the ide­al sharp­en­ing an­gle for each edge and is mea­sured by a laser be­fore sharp­en­ing. A whet­stone and pre­ci­sion robots car­ry out the task of sharp­en­ing the knife and each blade is giv­en a fi­nal pol­ish be­fore be­ing sent out. That all be­ing said, like most knives, the ini­tial fac­to­ry sharp­ness will dull a bit af­ter the first cou­ple of weeks of us­ing the blade.

The Clas­sic se­ries of knifes con­tin­ues to be top rat­ed by Cook’s Il­lus­trat­ed Mag­a­zine. Since these are pro­fes­sion­al-grade cook­ing knives, they have be­come a fa­vorite to many top chefs, not lim­it­ed to Martha Stew­art, Gor­don Ram­say, and Jamie Oliv­er.

Both the 8″ and the 6″ are great blades and very use­ful to have around the kitchen. How­ev­er, since they come with pro­fes­sion­al grade prices, with the Clas­sic Wide Cook’s Knife (8″) at $150 and the Clas­sic Cook’s Knife (6”) at $100, the novice cook or cook on a bud­get might on­ly need to pur­chase one of them. In this case, I found that I use the 6″ clas­sic more that the 8″. Sim­i­lar in many re­gards- well made, sharp, well bal­anced, and com­fort­able to hold- they are a bit heavy and I found that the 6″ could han­dle most ev­ery­thing I would have used the 8″ for. Both are workhors­es, well-round­ed, and suit­ed for many tasks. Avail­able now, on­line and in stores.