Ever wonder what tools top chefs use every day? Bon Appétit asked 20 of NYC’s best chefs to share the essential tools they keep in their knife rolls. From precision knives to unexpected gadgets, find out what these culinary pros can't live without during a busy shift.
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00:00You want to see my knife roll?
00:11Let me show you my knife roll.
00:12My knife roll is utilitarian.
00:14My knife roll is full of beautiful knives
00:17that are collected all over the world.
00:18My knife roll is a organized clusterf**k.
00:22I use a shallow fish tub, which seafood comes in,
00:25and most restaurants will always have this.
00:27And I don't like using knife rolls
00:28because I find the fabric getting gross and dirty
00:31and it's hard to clean.
00:32Versus this, if it gets dirty,
00:33just run it through the dish machine,
00:34and then you swap it out and get a fresh one every time.
00:37Cleaver, slicer, petty knife
00:39are definitely the three knives I use the most.
00:42I'm not a big brand person,
00:43but I am a big material person,
00:45so both of these are carbon steel.
00:47Carbon steel definitely just stays sharper longer.
00:49It's easier to maintain, in my opinion.
00:50It does give a patina,
00:52but that doesn't necessarily bother me.
00:53I don't care about that look of it.
00:55There's a lot going on inside of this knife roll,
00:59but there's definitely a few specific guys
01:01that are super important to me.
01:02So all my knives have very, very specific uses.
01:05Like I use this for a lot of vegetables.
01:06These are certain types of vegetables.
01:08This is my go-to everyday knife
01:10that I use for all of this,
01:11slicing fish, whatever it is.
01:13It's just breaks down fish.
01:14This is like a paring knife for me.
01:16This one, custom made by Majime.
01:18His name is Max.
01:19He's a great knife worker.
01:20It actually needs to get repaired.
01:22Somebody dropped it.
01:23This is carbon steel.
01:24This one is about 10 years old.
01:25This is actually the original size behind it.
01:27You can see how much I've kind of used it.
01:29First time I've actually used this knife,
01:30I cut the tip of my finger off
01:32and I didn't touch it for like six months.
01:33I learned to respect knives a little bit more.
01:36On my knife roll, I have about eight knives.
01:38I really only favor two of them.
01:40My favorite knife I've ever had
01:42that I use most of is a CCK Chinese cleaver.
01:45Great for cutting vegetables.
01:46Works as a scooping surface,
01:48so you don't have to use like a pastry card
01:51or a bench scraper or anything like that.
01:53It's good for smashing garlic as well.
01:55As far as the debas go,
01:56because we're such a small restaurant,
01:57everything's really tight.
01:58The pedi knife is nice where it fits in really tight corners.
02:01It doesn't get in the way.
02:03This is pretty much my everything.
02:05This one was a custom made knife from a Brooklyn knife maker.
02:10It's beautiful from the custom handle to the size.
02:16This is called a sire.
02:17A sire is sort of like that wooden sleeve
02:20that keeps the knife safe.
02:21So this was something that one of my chefs taught me to do.
02:24I like line them up.
02:25It takes me like a half an hour
02:26to figure out the best way to line them up.
02:28I tape them together, then I wrap it in a towel
02:29and then hockey tape this whole thing together.
02:32I'll make a new knife roll every time I do a new project.
02:34This is probably my favorite knife,
02:35my Nisano pairing knife.
02:37I've gone through like five of these.
02:38It's great for like deboning things or I don't turn vegetables.
02:42I'm very bad at turning vegetables,
02:43but it has a bird's beak now, so you could do it.
02:45This is probably the knife that I use the most.
02:50My chef's knife, kind of my versatile everything knife.
02:54I use my chef's knife for everything.
02:56Big job, small job.
02:58It's my best friend.
03:01I use this chef knife for literally everything.
03:04It's like my boy.
03:06I use this little knife to peel like garlic, ginger,
03:09cut small scallions and stuff.
03:11I bought it for like $5 at Bed and Bath Beyond.
03:16Let me show you my knife roll.
03:17Super cute.
03:19Well designed.
03:20Boom.
03:21You get a little hat.
03:22But my favorite is really the Opinel.
03:24Best knife ever.
03:25Street knife, work life.
03:27It's made in France and I have this for over 25 years.
03:32And it cuts everything, like all the veggie.
03:35It's like really my favorite one.
03:36But honestly, you can do anything you want.
03:38Like you go to the jungle with this.
03:40Let me show you my knife roll.
03:41I keep it in a fish tub just because it's easy to locate
03:44and also store at the end of the night.
03:46I have my bread knife.
03:47I got this one in Paris.
03:48We've gone through so many different bread knives.
03:50Love this one because it's really sharp.
03:52I just love it.
03:53This one a friend got for me from Japan.
03:55So cute.
03:56So I have it there so it doesn't get lost.
03:58My sister's family is French and my brother-in-law
04:01found these in a flea market in his tiny village.
04:04These are my funny little spatulas.
04:07And I love them all.
04:08These two I washed by hand because they have little notes
04:11on them from the previous pastry chef.
04:13Petite spatule pour petit gâteau.
04:16Grand spatule pour entremont.
04:18I cherish them.
04:19And they're steel.
04:20They have these beautiful wooden handles.
04:22I've never had a knife like this.
04:24It is for like slicing fish.
04:26I don't have a lot of opportunity to use it.
04:28Being able to get it while away on a trip was very cool.
04:31I had like one day in Paris with my wife.
04:33The first thing I did was look up a knife store
04:35because I knew that I was going to get something
04:37and I found this.
04:38This one I just got from Japan.
04:40Super beautiful.
04:41Yanagi.
04:42And this is my probably my favorite chef's knife.
04:44A Tsukiji Masamoto.
04:45They're hard to get these days.
04:47You can see I've used it a lot.
04:48They're like rugged and they're not that expensive.
04:50They stopped importing them.
04:52Hopefully he put in like a really large order for me so I can have them for years.
04:56I don't bring a knife roll to work.
04:59Most people don't.
05:00We try to provide all the tools you need right here.
05:03These are kind of like our knives for rep.
05:05Cleavers, chef knives, and a curie.
05:08We've got some pointly sharper knives upstairs though.
05:10We take probably a little bit more care of these.
05:13They're sharper so that anything that we slice for service,
05:17we get like a lot nicer cuts.
05:19This knife actually, as a cook that used to work here, she brought this in.
05:23It's probably made of like the cheapest metal,
05:25but because it is made of super cheap metal,
05:27it sharpens really, really well.
05:29So this is actually probably one of my favorite ones to use.
05:33At Williamsburg Pizza, I don't carry traditional knife rolls,
05:37but really important tools.
05:38Pizza cutter.
05:39We got our Casio watch.
05:41We do our baker's percentages on there.
05:42I do math all freaking diet.
05:44You know, you got to open up stuff once in a while.
05:46So a nice pocket knife, you know, and it takes care of the best.
05:54This is it.
05:54Minimal, but efficient.
05:56Always offset spatulas, my little offset spatula.
05:59I keep this in my back pocket.
06:00I like using my offsets to kind of like pick things up,
06:02like something that's flat that I don't want to use my hands.
06:04I use the offset spatula.
06:05I have my tweezers.
06:07I usually keep my offset and my tweezers in both hands.
06:10So I would use the scoop up something with the offset
06:13and use the tweezer to grab something.
06:14So it's really good for plating.
06:16My knife and my steel and spoons.
06:19Let's see what we got here.
06:21A bunch of spoons, different size spoons,
06:24a little sieve just for like powder.
06:27So small preparations, scissors, tweezers, bunch of tweezers.
06:32They get lost as well, a lot.
06:33I always like to have like different types.
06:35This one is actually the one that I like the most right now.
06:38Just cause it's thick and sturdy.
06:39So it helps me like, you know, play better.
06:42Fish tweezers, this is my favorite ones.
06:47Tweezer tweezers.
06:48These do not get used anymore.
06:49This is from a former life.
06:51Sani test strips and batteries for scales because they're always dying.
06:55The best can opener in the world.
06:57It's Japanese style can openers that will never break.
06:59It'll last you a lifetime.
07:01I've probably had this can opener for over a decade at this point
07:03and it'll last me another hundred years easily.
07:05I always have a thermometer in here as well.
07:08Just in case if you're doing offsite, you just need to temp it.
07:11Thermometer, fish scaler, melon baller, healer, spoons.
07:16Then I have two zesters.
07:17This zester for limes because I don't want it to be as sharp.
07:20I don't want as much piff.
07:22Then I use this sharper zester for lemons.
07:25So I use this particular pair of poultry shears to cut like shellfish or fish bones.
07:30And then I have these to cut tape for labeling.
07:33Specific kitchens will be very particular about how you cut your kitchen tape
07:38when you label port containers.
07:40Sharp, clean edges are a thing.
07:43If you tear your masking tape or you're lazy about how you label things,
07:47that won't fly in a lot of kitchens.
07:49This one chef, shout out to Alex Jackson, he recommended Joyce Chen's.
07:53They're a specific kind of scissor that industry people may know.
07:57I have used this and now they're pretty worn out.
07:59So I could use some new Joyce Chen's.
08:02I also have my little cake tester.
08:04I like this for checking if things are done,
08:07a vegetable to see how tender it is, if it's cooked.
08:10I also use this to gauge the temperature of whatever protein I'm cooking,
08:13either meat or fish.
08:15I'll put it in there, put it to my lips, see how warm it is.
08:17And they'll kind of tell me if it's like medium, medium rare, rare, well done.
08:21Always have a couple of new cake testers ready to roll.
08:24You always need a cake tester.
08:25You actually need a lot because they get lost all the time.
08:28I have four cake testers because my cooks lose them a lot.
08:32So I need to have backups for them.
08:34I always have a Sharpie on me too to label things.
08:36Sharpies and pens always.
08:38For the most part, you know, these belong to me, but it's also communal.
08:41We have a very trusting team that takes care of all the tools because I love it.
08:46It makes me really happy that they love and want to use it too.
08:49So what's mine is yours if you take care of it.
08:53My knife roll is sentimental to me because that's the knife roll that I received
08:57nine years ago when I started working here.
09:00It's taken me through some very good days and bad days.
09:03A that really hints of my knife roll before me.
09:08I think it's happening.
09:08공 ascended up in shape.
09:09The context you see is probablyambling on the expansion of the game.
09:11I'm abreast of these girls now.
09:12And I'll follow them and see you.
09:13See you next time.
09:14All in a row.
09:15If you go back, click the chart down and see me see...
09:16I'm going back in among theuestos.
09:18Maybe it's boring.
09:19ков聖iously starts and we're not describing.
09:20See you next time though.
09:21m'IND myself...
09:22...
09:23...
09:24...
09:25...
09:26at 2 second time.