Global Knife Set

Global knives:
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With the amount of cooking programs on television I found that my interest in cooking has increased, so much so that a few years ago my parents purchased a set of Global cooking knives for me to use in the kitchen. My enthusiasm stemmed mainly from watching Jamie Oliver on TV, I found his enthusiasm infectious and therefore found that I wanted better equipment.

Global Knives were first ...
...are:

GSF-15 Global Peeling Knife:
I use this knife to chop small vegetables such as garlic and mushrooms. It is a light knife, easy to use and handle and when sharp cuts through effortlessly.

G-3 Global Carving Knife:
This knife I use to slice joints of meat such as Beef or Lamb, again a fairly light knife that is easy to hold and use

GF-24 Global Carving Fork:
I use this to hold the ... more

Global knives:
^^^^^^^^^

With the amount of cooking programs on television I found that my interest in cooking has increased, so much so that a few years ago my parents purchased a set of Global cooking knives for me to use in the kitchen. My enthusiasm stemmed mainly from watching Jamie Oliver on TV, I found his enthusiasm infectious and therefore found that I wanted better equipment.

Global Knives were first designed way back in 1985 by a guy called Komin Yamada, he was tasked with fashioning a set of knives that would suit amateur as well as professional. The knives he designed are made from Cromova Stainless Steel and then hardened. This is supposed to ensure that they keep a razor sharp edge longer than any other steel as well as resisting stains and rust corrosion. They are also made in "one piece" in that the handle and blade are fashioned out of the same piece of steel. This is good in that it is easy to clean and dry, and there are no areas in which food can get trapped.

The set I have, which incidentally were all bought separately rather than in a wallet or knife block are:

GSF-15 Global Peeling Knife:
I use this knife to chop small vegetables such as garlic and mushrooms. It is a light knife, easy to use and handle and when sharp cuts through effortlessly.

G-3 Global Carving Knife:
This knife I use to slice joints of meat such as Beef or Lamb, again a fairly light knife that is easy to hold and use

GF-24 Global Carving Fork:
I use this to hold the joints on meat in place for the carving knife. The prongs are very sharp and the handle is well gripped to keep things steady

G-5 Global Vegetable Chopper:
This look like a meat chopper to me, I use this to chop bigger vegetables such are large tomatoes or potatoes.

G-9 Global Bread Knife:
Use this knife for cutting bread (pretty obvious this one)

Global GS-10 Cheese Knife:
As well as using this for cheese I sometimes use this for cutting soft fleshy fruit and vegetables as the blade is serrated, sometimes it seems to just cut better.

GS-11 Global Utility Knife:
To be honest, I don't have a specific use for this particular knife; in fact I often think that I should not have had it. I do use it sometimes for cleaning out the inside of capsicums as the blade is flexible and the ridges within capsicums are uneven,

Global Meat Knife:
I use this for cutting all meats, from chicken breast through to sausages and salami's

My Opinion:
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If you look online or in a specialist kitchen shop then you will see that there is a massive range of Global (and other manufacturers) knives to choose from. You will also notice that they are really expensive. I don't think Global are the most expensive out there but when you think that the cheese knifes RRP is about £60 and the bread knife RRP is £75 these are not cheap knives to purchase (although you can get them much cheaper than the RRP almost anywhere that you purchase them).

If I am honest with myself I would have to say that I do not think that they are worth the money. One particular website that I go to tells me a bit on the history and the technology that goes into these knives and that is all well and good, but in real terms I don't care about that, these knives will cut your food no better than a cheaper set of knives, even though they will last longer, possibly a lifetime if looked after and they are made with better materials. So my opinion at the moment is that a set of professional knives (unless you are a professional cook) is more about a status symbol to show your friends rather than being of any real advantage in the kitchen. I could go to IKEA and get a set of knives for £15 they will still sharpen up although it may mean that I would need to sharpen them more often or heaven forbid replace them after 5/7 years. I am not saying that global knives are bad quality, because they are not, but I cannot say that they justify the prices charged.

All the knives that I have are made from one piece of Stainless Steel, they are all light to hold and easy to manoeuvre and manage, when new they are also incredibly sharp, so sharp that my vegetable chopper would cut through a whole tomato just using the weight of the blade and drawing the blade back towards me. I did find that the blades do become fairly blunt fairly quickly although that maybe because I was not performing a "proper" sharpening schedule, which is basically using a whetstone (or minosharp sharpening device) one a month and a sharpening steel EVERY time you cook, but with a sharpening steel RRP starting at £105 I am dubious about wanting to spend that kind of money.

Storage:
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I store my knives on a magnetic strip. This ensures that they are out of the way but still easy to get to when cooking. A problem with storing knives this was is that you get scratch marks on the blades and at the point where the blade meets the handle, of course over time you knives will get scratch marks on them, but also at the same time when you have a £500+ set of knives that seem to scratch fairly easily it is annoying, that maybe me being fussy

Other methods are using a large wallet, this will of course protect little prying fingers should you have children, but will also stop you getting marks on your knives. If I had known this when I had bought them then I would have gone with the wallet. You could of course use a knife block, I imagine these will stop the knives getting scratches too but I've also felt there are two downsides to knife blocks. 1: they take up valuable workspace, and if you are pushed for room (as I am) then you don't want a big knife block in the way 2: as all the handles are the same design then with the bigger knives you may have to "go through" the knife block more than once to find the knife you want. A small point but an annoying one (or perhaps yet again I'm just fussy)

However you store them, a way NEVER to store them is by chucking them in a drawer with everything else. Not only will you slice your fingers to bits, you will also ruin your knives (more than any magnetic strip will ever do) and they will get blunt as they bash up against all the other things in the drawer

Sharpening:
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Whilst researching this review I found out tons about sharpening knives. With any set of knives, be it Global or out of Ikea you need to keeps your knives sharp. The way to do this is about once a month with a whetstone (or a water sharpener). The whetstones come in various grades; you can get medium, fine and super fine for global knives.

Medium is to get a sharp blade and the fine/super fine is to hone that sharpness into a razor sharp blade. The way to use a whetstone is to put it on a non-slip surface and soak it with water, then putting the blade on the stone (blade away from you) you draw it back towards you, then on the other side of the knife (blade towards you) draw the blade away from you. Global do "guides" which you put on the blades, this ensures you sharpen at the correct angle, if you do not have the guides then when putting the blade on the stone, run you finder along the stone and onto the blade, you should be able to "feel" the angle the blade, also make sure you keep the stone wet.

The water sharpener (just google for minosharp to get a picture) works the same way as a whetstone but has 2 ceramic wheels half immersed in water and you draw you knife blade towards you in order to sharpen it. You do this maybe 10 times for the "medium grade" and 10 times for the "fine grade". If you get a sharpener that is recommended for global knives then the wheels are wet at the right angle to sharpen the blade. If the knives are extremely blunt you may need to get them professional sharpened.

Note, do not PUSH the blade through (either whetstone or water sharpener) or do a sawing motion as you will at least blunt the blades or at worst ruin them altogether. On top of this regime you should also use a steel every time you cook, again using about 10 strokes of the blade (each side of the blade that is so 20 strokes in total).

Personally I use the water sharpener, putting my blades through the medium one then the fine about 10 times each on a monthly basis, then doing the same thing about 3 times on medium and fine after each cooking session. But again I found that using this method has caused long marks down the length of the blade (not good).

With my knives I have found it hard work using the bread knife, every thing I read tells me not to use a whetstone or sharpener to sharpen a serrated blade, therefore my bread knife is blunt and I've no idea how to sharpen it.

Overall:
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I do like my global knives, and I enjoy using them they are used everyday and I have learnt to keep them sharp, however they do mark easily and they are expensive so if I knew then what I know now I probably would not have asked for them. However that said I do enjoy using them and so overall i would recommend them, but shop around for the best prices.

Last note:
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If you are interested in getting yourself a set of proper cooking knives I recommend that you go into a shop first, ask to hold the knives and see how they feel in your grip, they should really feel like a natural extension of your hand and feel well balanced. They are an expensive investment and you need to get it right.

These are all my own words based upon my experience with these knives. These may be cross posted over to my Dooyoo account (stevepeto) 

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