Comfort and balance

When you buy your knives, especially your chef’s knife, it’s crucial that your knife be comfortable for you. If it’s not comfortable, you won’t use it. It’s that simple.

This is completely subjective and may be hardest to decide. What’s comfortable for me might not be comfortable for you. My preference is a 10-inch chef’s knife with a thin blade and no bolster. Why? Because it feels comfortable in my hand. When I hold the knife, the feel of the thinner blade between my thumb and forefinger is more comfortable than a wider blade with a bolster. While I do sometimes use knives with thicker blades, I’m more comfortable with a thinner one. There’s no technical reason. The presence of a bolster means the blade will be thicker. Also, the length of the knife has no bearing on whether or not there’s a bolster. That’s a design choice of the manufacturer. This is why it’s so important to hold a chef’s knife before you buy it. You might like a bolster. You might not care. But it would be disappointing to bring home a knife only to find that you don’t like using it.

Comfortable also means how the handle feels in your hand. You have at least four choices: a traditional wooden or wood composite handle found on European knives, a D-shaped handle, a molded plastic handle, or a handle that’s sculpted from the same piece of metal that forms the blade. My preference is the traditional wood and wood composite handle. It feels more comfortable to me. But you might feel otherwise. This is where the place you buy your knife becomes important.

The knife also has to feel balanced. This too is completely personal and up to you. What does balanced mean? After determining that the handle is comfortable, this leaves the weight and tipping of the knife to be determined. When you hold it in the air, does it tip forward like it has too much weight in the blade? Does it tip backward, or lift up, because the handle feels too heavy and the blade feels too light?

There’s no formula or chart to match the handle and balance. It’s solely a matter of what you like and feel. A knife might feel perfect to me, but not to you. So when you’re knife shopping, hold as many knives as you possibly can (but not at once!), for two reasons: You’ll have this knife forever. And you’ll never use a knife that you don’t like.