Why are most of us so woefully uninformed about our kitchen knives? We are intimidated by our knives when they are sharp, annoyed by them when they are dull, and quietly ashamed that we don't know how to use them with any competence. For a species that has been using knives for nearly as long as we have been walking upright, that's a serious problem. An Edge in the Kitchen is the solution, an intelligent and delightful debunking of the mysteries of kitchen knives once and for all. If you can stack blocks, you can cut restaurant-quality diced vegetables. If you can fold a paper airplane, you can sharpen your knives better than many professionals.
Veteran cook Chad Ward provides an in-depth guide to the most important tool in the kitchen, including how to choose the best kitchen knives in your price range, practical tutorials on knife skills, a step-by-step section on sharpening, and more----all illustrated with beautiful photographs throughout. Along the way you will discover what a cow sword is, and why you might want one; why chefs are abandoning their heavy knives in droves; and why the Pinch and the Claw, strange as they may sound, are in fact the best way to make precision vegetable cuts with speed and style.
An Edge in the Kitchen is the one and only guide to the most important tool in the kitchen.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Knives:
This is an excellent book for anyone who enjoys cooking and works with nice sets of knives in the kitchen.
It is a must have book for chefs and cooking aficionados.
Pretty Good but not great:
The author is obviously very knowledgeable about knives, and he does a great job of breaking down the myths and providing facts on the different knife styles, shapes, blade hardness, which has given me a check list of things I will definitely look for when I buy my next kitchen knife. I am a little disappointed in the sharpening section and to a similar degree in the "how to tell if a knife is good when you are at the store buying" section. My disappointment is that the descriptions of edge sharpness, edge... more info
Most complete & best value book on the subject:
Chad Ward - An Edge in the Kitchen I own two books on kitchen knives and knife skills, this one and Weinstein's Mastering Knife Skills. Chad Ward's book is the best of the two by its breadth and wealth of information and is objectively a very good book. Physically, the book is a medium sized hard cover, well edited. There is a number of good B&W pictures through the book to illustrate specific points, and there's a central section of 48 pages of glossy color pictures depicting specific knife... more info
An Excellent Resource:
I enjoyed Chad Ward's book immensely. It was easy to follow, had great pictures, is full of good information, and is actually fun to read. He does a good job of covering what you need in a knife and what you may want if you get bitten by the knife bug. He dispels common knife myths and arms you with information so you do not fall for the sales pitch at a fancy knife display in a department store. Knives for all budgets are covered from $50 knives to those in the hundreds and emphasis is on getting the best... more info
