Inside 20 Chefs' Knife Rolls: Pro Chefs Reveal Their Go-To Tools

[upbeat music]

[Chef 1] You wanna see my knife roll?

Let me show you my knife roll.

My knife roll is utilitarian.

My knife roll is full of beautiful knives

I've collected all over the world.

My knife roll is a organized cluster [beep].

I use a shallow fish tub which seafood comes in

and most restaurants will always have this

and I don't like using knife rolls,

because I find the fabric getting gross and dirty

and it's hard to clean,

versus this if it gets dirty

you just run through the dish machine

and then you swap it out and get a fresh one every time.

Cleaver, slicer, petty knife

are definitely like the three knives I use the most.

I'm not a big brand person,

but I am a big like material person.

So like both of these are carbon steel.

Carbon steel definitely just stays sharper longer,

it's easier to maintain in my opinion.

It does give a patina,

but that doesn't necessarily bother me,

I don't care about that look of it.

[upbeat music]

There's a lot going on inside of this knife roll,

but there's definitely a few specific guys

that are super important to me.

So all my knives have very, very specific uses.

Like I use this for a lot of vegetables,

these are certain types of vegetables.

This is my go-to everyday knife

that I use for all of this,

slicing fish, whatever it is, just breaks down fish.

This is like a paring knife for me.

This one custom made by Majime,

his name is Max, he's a great knife worker.

It actually needs to get repaired, somebody dropped it.

This is carbon steel.

This one is about 10 years old.

This is actually the original size behind it.

You can see how much I've kind of used it.

First time I actually used this knife,

I cut the tip of my finger off

and I didn't touch it for like six months.

I learned to respect knives a little bit more.

[Kane laughing]

In my knife roll I have about eight knives.

I really only favor two of them.

My favorite knife I've ever had,

that I use most of is a CCK Chinese Cleaver.

Great for cutting vegetables.

Works as a scooping surface

so you don't have to use like a pastry card

or bench scraper or anything like that.

It's good for smashing garlic as well.

As far as the [indistinct] go,

because we're such a small restaurant,

everything's really tight.

The petty knife is nice where it fits in

really tight corners, doesn't get in the way.

This is pretty much my everything.

This one was a custom made knife

from a Brooklyn knife maker.

It's beautiful, from the custom handle to the size.

This is called a saya.

A saya is sort of like that wooden sleeve

that keeps the knife safe.

So this was something that

one of my chefs taught me to do.

I like line them up, it takes me like a half an hour

to figure out the best way to line them up.

I tape them together, then I wrap it in a towel

and then hockey tape this whole thing together.

I'll make a new knife roll every time I do a new project.

This is probably my favorite knife,

my Misono paring knife.

I've gone through like five of these.

It's great for like deboning things

or I don't turn vegetables,

I'm very bad at turning vegetables,

but it has a birds beak now so you could do it.

This is probably the knife that I use the most.

My chef's knife, kind of my versatile everything knife.

I use my chef's knife for everything.

Big job, small job, it's my best friend.

[upbeat music]

I use this chef knife for literally everything.

It's like my boy.

I use this little knife to peel like garlic, ginger,

cut small scallions and stuff.

I bought it for like $5 at Bed and Bath Beyond.

Let me show you my knife roll.

Super cute, well designed. Boom.

You get a little hat,

but my favorite is really the Opinel,

best knife ever.

Street knife, work life.

It's made in France

and I have this for over 25 years

and it cuts everything like all the [indistinct].

It's like really my favorite one.

But honestly, you can do anything you want.

Like you go to the jungle with this.

Let me show you my knife roll.

I keep it in a fish tub

just because it's easy to locate

and also store at the end of the night.

I have my bread knife, I got this one in Paris.

We've gone through so many different bread knives.

Love this one because it's really sharp. I just love it.

[Maria] This one a friend got for me from Japan.

So cute.

So I have it there so it doesn't get lost.

My sister's family is French

and my brother-in-law found these in a flea market

in his tiny village.

These are my funny little specialists

and I love them all.

These two I wash by hand

because they have little notes on them

from the previous pastry chef.

[speaking French]

I cherish them.

And they're steel, they have these beautiful wooden handles.

I've never had a knife like this.

It is for like slicing fish.

I don't have a lot of opportunity to use it.

Being able to get it while away on a trip was very cool.

I had like one day in Paris with my wife.

The first thing I did was look up a knife store

'cause I knew that I was gonna get something

and I found this.

This one I just got from Japan.

Super beautiful Yanagi.

And this is probably my favorite chef's knife,

a Tsukiji Masamoto.

They're hard to get these days,

you can see I've used it a lot.

They're like rugged and they're not that expensive.

They stopped importing them.

Hopefully he put in like a really large order for me

so I can have them for years.

I don't bring a knife roll to work, most people don't.

We try to provide all the tools you need right here.

These are kind of like our knives for prep.

Cleavers, chef knives, nakiri,

and we've got some [indistinct] sharper knives

upstairs, though.

We take probably a little bit more care of these.

They're sharper so that anything that we slice for service,

we get like a lot nicer cuts.

This knife actually, a cook that used to work here,

she brought this in.

It's probably made of like the cheapest metal,

but because it is made of super cheap metal,

it sharpens really, really well.

So this is actually probably one of my favorite ones to use.

At Williamsburg Pizza,

I don't carry traditional knife roll,

but really important tools.

Pizza cutter. We got our Casio watch.

We do our bakers' percentages on there.

I do the whole freaking diet.

You know you gotta open up stuff once in a while.

So little nice pocket knife, you know,

and it takes care of the [indistinct].

This is it. Minimal but efficient.

Always offset spatulas. My little offset spatula.

I keep this in my back pocket.

I like using my offsets to kind of like pick things up,

like something that's flat that I don't wanna use my hands,

I use the offset spatula.

I have my tweezers.

I usually keep my offset and my tweezers in both hands.

So I would use the scoop up something with the offset

and use the tweezer to grab something.

So it's really good for plating.

My knife and my steel, and spoons.

Okay, let's see what we got here.

A bunch of spoons, different size spoons,

a little sieve, just for like powder.

So small preparations. Scissors, tweezers.

Bunch of tweezers. They get lost as well, a lot.

I always like to have like different types.

This one is actually the one that I like the most right now.

Just 'cause it's thick and sturdy.

So it helps me like you know, plate better.

Fish tweezers. This is my favorite ones.

Tweezer tweezers.

These do not get used anymore. This is from a former life.

Sani test strips and batteries for scales

because they're always dying.

The best can opener in the world,

Japanese style can openers that will never break.

It'll last you a lifetime.

I've probably had this can opener

for over a decade at this point

and it'll last me another 100 years easily.

But I always have a thermometer in here as well.

Just in case, if you're doing it offsite,

just need a temp it.

[Chef 2] Thermometer, fish scaler, melon baller,

healer, spoons.

Then I have two zesters, this zester for limes

'cause I don't want it to be as sharp.

I don't want as much pith.

Then I use this sharper zester for lemons.

So I use this particular pair of poultry shears,

cut like shellfish or fish bones

and then I have these to cut tape for labeling.

Specific kitchens will be very particular about

how you cut your kitchen tape when you

label core containers.

Sharp clean edges are a thing.

If you tear your masking tape

or you're lazy about how you label things,

that won't fly in a lot of kitchens.

This one chef, shout out to Alex Jackson.

He recommended Joyce Chens.

They're a specific kind of scissor

that industry people may know.

I have used this and now they're pretty worn out

so I could use some new Joyce Chens.

I also have my little cake tester.

I like this for checking if things are done.

A vegetable, to see how tender it is, if it's cooked.

I also use this to gauge the temperature

of whatever protein I'm cooking.

Either meat or fish.

I'll put it in there,

put it to my lips, see how warm it is,

and that'll kind of tell me if it's like medium,

medium rare, rare, well done.

[Chef 3] Always have a couple new cake testers

ready to roll.

You always need a cake tester.

You actually need a lot 'cause they get lost all the time.

I have four cake testers

'cause my cooks lose them a lot,

so I need to have backups for them.

I always have a Sharpie on me too, to label things.

[Chef 3] Sharpies and pens always.

For the most part,

you know these belong to me, but it's also communal.

We have a very trusting team that takes care

of all the tools because I love it,

it makes me really happy that they love

and want to use it too.

So what's mine is yours if you take care of it.

My knife roll is sentimental to me

because that's the knife roll

that I received nine years ago when I started working here.

It's taken me through some very good days and bad days.