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I cook a lot, and as a person who cooks a lot, you’d think my chef’s knife would be the tool I use the most. I certainly pull out my chef’s knife frequently, but the real star of my kitchen—the one I rely on daily—is my petty knife, a Togiharu Hammered Damascus. With a blade that’s 5.5 inches long, it’s smaller than a standard chef’s knife but bigger than a paring knife, making it an ideal tool for slicing onions, cutting fruit, or portioning cured meat for a charcuterie board.
Petty knives have triangular, straight-edged blades that tend to run 4-to-6 inches long. Chef’s knives, on the other hand, are usually at least 8 inches long. Sure, chef’s knives are a practical choice for more robust tasks like breaking down a chicken, but they can’t handle delicate tasks. Paring knives are excellent for intricate knife work, like cutting and peeling (or carving, if you’re feeling fancy) fruits and vegetables, but they’re a little too small to do any serious prep work. Petty knives are the happy medium: The best ones can tackle little tasks, like dicing shallots, and more arduous jobs, like filleting fish or deboning chicken thighs.
Because the petty knife is so versatile, it’s the knife I find myself reaching for the most. In the morning, I use the knife to finely chop some herbs for an omelet. At lunch, I use it to slice through cherry tomatoes, avocados, and radishes for my grain bowls and salads. My petty knife makes an appearance again at cocktail hour, when it’s time to assemble a plate of cheese and crackers. Dinnertime rolls around and I slide my petty knife carefully into the space between our salmon fillets and their skin, moving back and forth until the skin is fully separated.
I love my petty knife so much that I’ll even put it in a case and pack it in my bag when I’m en route to a picnic or potluck, just in case I need to slice cheese and charcuterie or have to do some last-minute prep.
I can’t use my petty knife for everything. After all, it’s not big enough to butcher a large cut of meat or strong enough to cut through tough butternut squash—but it’s still the most practical tool in my kitchen. It’s the Goldilocks ideal of knives: it’s not too big. It’s not too small. It’s just right.
