Ode to a chef’s knife

My six year old chef’s knife broke yesterday during the making of shepherd’s pie.  It was a good knife while it lasted – $11 from London Drugs, but had superb balance and strength, was easy to sharpen, and had no issues with rusting or staining.  *Tear*  I’d like to blame the bf and his questionable culinary skills, but after a thorough post-mortem (it had a half CENTIMETER tang, if that!) and autopsy (so those rivets weren’t actually riveting anything?) I was forced to conclude that my London Drugs chef knife probably held out longer than it should have.

At $11 six years ago, my knife had a use-cost of just under $2 per year.  I used it every day.  In comparison, I have a knife set I bought for $5 from a bargain shop.  I haven’t used the chef knife from that set in AGES. In fact, I rarely use any of those knives at all because soon after I bought them, they became rickety and unbalanced.  Even though the entire set was cheaper than my one knife, my use-cost for that set is probably closer to the full $5 I paid for it.

Today I will be going to get a new knife.  I can’t really justify getting a fancy $200 knife – I’d have to use it every day for 100 years to get the same value out of it as my old knife! – but I will be looking for something slightly sturdier.