{"id":4140,"date":"2010-01-05T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T19:23:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-08-05T12:49:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T06:49:55","slug":"kiwi-knives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/kiwi-knives\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwi Knives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I got more serious about cooking, I splurged and bought myself a very nice Kai Shun santoku\u00c2\u00ad like the <a href=\"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/tosagata-hocho-1\/\">previously reviewed<\/a> Tosagata Hocho. I used its preternaturally sharp edge with joyous dispatch for about 6 months, until I woefully cut some citrus with it and left it dirty overnight, eroding that wonderful edge. I&#8217;ve never been able to get that magic edge back, even with pro sharpening.<\/p>\n<p>On a visit to a local Asian market, I found a series of Thai-made Kiwi brand knives. In the store, they were nearly free: The large tapered chef&#8217;s knife (model #21) that soon stole my heart cost around $4; the paring knife was $1.50.<\/p>\n<p>These knives are very sharp and schuss through veggies and meats like it&#8217;s nothing. Don&#8217;t go hacking at bones with the thinner models, but Kiwi also makes quite usable cleavers for around $8. The miraculous part is, the knives hold an incredible edge for months with proper use of your steel, and they take a new edge with aplomb after a few strokes on a stone. <\/p>\n<p>I have owned knives by Wusthof, Kyocera, Calphalon, and Ikea (::shudder::) and the Kiwis are the most consistently sharp, most durable, and have the most effective shapes. I&#8217;ve bought or suggested them for all of my foodie friends, and people can&#8217;t get over how wonderful they are. They don&#8217;t look like much, but they&#8217;re well-balanced, very sharp. It doesn&#8217;t hurt that I could have picked up a full set for less than my crappy block-o-food-manglers cost 10 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>As far as longevity goes, I&#8217;ve had my main chef&#8217;s knife for about four years, have steeled it every time I used it and given it a few good hones on my <a href=\"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/sharpmaker\/\">Spyderco Sharpmaker<\/a>. It&#8217;s still wicked sharp, and while I haven&#8217;t babied it, it looks none the worse for wear. I used my paring knife to whack the lid off a persnickety glued-shut can of Lyle&#8217;s Golden Syrup, and in my zeal, the tip bent over almost double. I thought, Oh no! But then I bent it back in place with a pair of pliers, and it&#8217;s basically good as new.  <\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re definitely the Jeep Wranglers of the kitchen. I suggest buying them locally if you live in an area with Asian markets; if not, they can be picked up online at generally higher prices.<\/p>\n<div class='ctx-module-container ctx_default_placement ctx-clearfix'><\/div><span class=\"ctx-article-root\"><!-- --><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cheapest high-quality cutlery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[1320],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}