7

I went to a nearby supermarket that caters to a Spanish South American and Brazilian/Portuguese clientele. In addition to their excellent onsite fishmonger and butcher, the cookware section had a broad array of culinary knives in patterns I had never seen before. I know about the various patterns of French and German knives, and about the wide array of Japanese knives and their various uses, and about the Chinese chef's cleaver, and about the Indian bonti (with and without coconut scrapers) and chakku and gandasa...

Is there a guide to traditional culinary cutlery patterns? I can recognize a number of Thai knives, but I don't have names for them. Google is failing me. Help?

Knife nerd in trouble!

Jolenealaska
  • 58,386
  • 30
  • 196
  • 321
RI Swamp Yankee
  • 3,942
  • 1
  • 20
  • 25
  • world wide? Uhhh, that's going to be hard... for example, even people really knowledgeable about japanese knives each forget a few patterns when writing guides, probably because of regional focus.... – rackandboneman Mar 14 '17 at 09:09
  • Maybe ask the butcher/fishmonger at that market. I would think they could identify the pattern/use of the knifes they carry. – Optionparty Mar 14 '17 at 15:27
  • Something like [this](https://www.craftsy.com/blog/2014/03/an-illustrated-guide-to-types-of-knives/) or something like [this](http://www.williams-sonoma.com/shop/cutlery/utility-knives/?cm_type=lnav)? – BaffledCook Mar 16 '17 at 07:52
  • @BaffledCook - No, those are pretty standard patterns. I'm interested in South American, SE Asian and African kitchen cutlery that are different - or European knives that aren't found in the typical working kitchen in the USA. Thanks for the links, tho! – RI Swamp Yankee Mar 16 '17 at 15:47
  • 1
    Would it be worth converting this to community wiki, and trying to create the resource that's being asked about? (or link to resources on knives of different cultures) Or maybe a new question, and link back to this one? – Joe Aug 08 '17 at 15:53

1 Answers1

1

A good start is probably wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_knife. There you will see the main types of knives and their name. If you recognize one, I'd suggest you to google it. I haven't found a comprehensive guide for all of them.

maugch
  • 133
  • 1
  • 6