If your knowledge of knives ends at “butter” and “bread,” you might be selling your kitchen and your cooking experiences short. There are tons of different knives and ways to use them – making every part of food prep and cooking that much easier. Here are some of the lesser-known but really important knives available to amateur and professional chefs alike.

• Chef’s knife: This blade is between 6 and 14 inches long, with a slightly curved body. It’s versatile and a great multi-purpose knife that’s good for chopping vegetables, cutting meat, and more.
• Paring knife: This knife has a short blade that makes it perfect for peeling fruits and vegetables, deveining shellfish, and other intricate tasks.
• Serrated utility knife: With a blade between 4 and 7 inches long, it looks like a shorter bread knife. It’s perfect for cleaning and slicing fruits, vegetables, bagels, and breads.
• Boning knife: This a thin, flexible blade that measures between 5 and 7 inches long and is used to separate meat from bone. Some are better for beef, while others are better for chicken, and some are only used to filet fish.
• Bread knife: This long serrated knife is a kitchen classic, used for slicing bread without squishing it.
• Carving knife: A thinner version of a chef’s knife, the sharp edge of this blade makes it perfect for slicing meat and carving food like roasts and turkeys.
• Cleaver: A heavy, rectangular knife with a heavy thick blade, this knife is used for separating meat from bone. It’s a staple in restaurants and butcher shops and can easily be used in homes that need to break down large pieces of meat or bring back meat from hunting trips.
• Mincing knife: This blade, when rocked back and forth, is the perfect tool to finely cut veggies and herbs.
• Trimming knife: This tool looks like a smaller boning knife at just under 3 inches long. It can trim fat from meat and even help remove meat from bone in some cuts. A trimming knife will even let you carve decorative vegetables, if that’s something you’re looking to add to your kitchen and cooking skills.

If you’d like to be a better cook, you might want to invest in the right cutlery. Check out our selection of cookware and cutlery to become the very best cook you can be!