A chefs knife will do for everything. Keep it sharp enough and it'll even slice bread. As for the onion horizontal cuts are unnecessary. Offset radial cuts are fine (as you move away from the centre vertical cut you angle it more). 
this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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The chopping technique is not really that necessary. It's great for chopping lots of veggies at speed, but if you're just cutting veggies for a single meal then there's not that much benefit unless you're already highly practiced and that's your default.
What's far more important is just being cognizant for each cut you make. Walk don't run.
As a chef, the only inaccuracy I see here is that bamboo cutting boards are good for knives. They are a great, cheap, sustainable option, but the silica content makes bamboo incredibly hard, and it will dull your blades faster than wood or plastic cutting boards.
What about using the bread knife for meat?
Edit: also what's "produce"?
American for fruit and veg.
I never understood why people use serrated knives for bread, it gets crumbs everywhere. I use a sharp chef knife instead and it's much cleaner. I use it for 95% of stuff, there's no much need for any other.
If you're cutting soft soft bread, then a plain blade is fine, but if it's a crusty bread like a sourdough, the serrated blade is much better at cutting the crust without crushing the soft interior (IME, not a chef)
"Produce" is presumably fruit and vegetables, although that's a pretty broad category to lump together given that so many vegetables behave differently. Consider a tomato versus lettuce or a yam, for instance.
I don't see this suggesting a bread knife for meat, but a dull serrated blade beats a worn plain edge for any purpose. And produce is anything grown like fruit and veg.
It's got produce, bread, and meat highlighted for the bread knife.
The only thing I've ever used a bread knife for is bread.
Ah I didn't see that little spiral graph. I agree with you for anyone who keeps their knives sharp. But if you're trying to cut thin slices off a roast and have to choose between a bread knife and a dull chef's knife, I'd likely go for the bread knife. That said, I don't know they intended it that way, and it totally could have just been an error.
I guess a bread knife works pretty well for slicing roast, i.e. the dish, not raw meat. Additionally, one may also use it for chopping e.g. kale or pumpkin.
The infographic only states that a bread knife is good for bread. It is correct in this regard.
Produce is the general term for fruits and vegetables and things of the like.
The bread knife has markers in the produce, bread, and meat sections
Chinese chef knife is missing. It's not a meat cleaver, the blade isn't nearly thick enough for it, but it does make quick work of veg. It's also one of the only knives used for Chinese cooking. Learned about it from Martin Yan.
This should be noted that the knife part is only for western style knives. Same with the cutting technique. That's only for a curved type blade.
I will add another bullet point to the list above, specifically regarding cutting boards. Poly cutting boards are also acceptable and primarily what I use. However, if I see you using a glass cutting board or a plate as a cutting board, or chopping directly on your granite countertop, I am afraid I am going to have to hurt you.
I am, as you can imagine, the default knife sharpener within the circle of my family and friends. However for quite some years I would not sharpen any knives for my sister anymore because she refused stop using her stupid 1980s glass cutting boards. (I believe they were probably actually intended to be serving trays, but good luck making people understand that.) She kept complaining that my sharpening was "no good" because her knives dulled so quickly.
I was eventually able to coordinate with my brother in law who was also sick of it, and we located all of the glass boardlike objects in the house and surreptitiously threw them away.
Is "poly" a local american slang for plastic? Anyway I prefer wood because I'd rather have some wood fibres in my food than microplastic. Not that anyone knows if it's actually harmful or not
Sort of. Polymer, actually. It's a common end-run around calling something "plastic" outright because that in and of itself is typically a shorthand for "cheap" or "flimsy."
Anyway, the plastic cutting boards in commercial use (i.e. the ones I use because I am that kind of nerd) are made of high density polyethylene.
Wood for most stuff, plastic for meat and fish because I don't want meat juice soaking into the wood.
Doing the lord's work here.
in my experience, granton blades just make the food stick more. i always figured it was just a lazy way for companies to save on materials.
It doesn't help them save on material since the knife is ground from an originally flat slab of steel. The amount of material they remove from that bar is irrelevant to their materials cost, although it does add a bit of machine work.
The scallops in the blade are effective at preventing some foods from sticking only if you are using a long slicing motion. When chopping down from above they accomplish nothing.
that settles it - i'm just a bad choppa
There is one knife I find absolutely essential that is missing:
Bec Oiseau. Sometimes also known as a sheep’s foot knife.
It’s a paring knife, but one where the blade is absolutely straight and it’s the spine that curves over near the tip. It works far better than any curved paring knife at cutting apart small items in the hand, like fruits.
For an onion, I've never diced it by making the cuts indicated by number 1, figuring the layers essentially do that for you. Am I doing it wrong?
Not wrong per se, but you'll end up with more inconsistently sized pieces if you don't do those initial cuts in my experience
I radially dice my onion. To me it seems like the horizontal and vertical cuts leave more uneven bits considering the layers already present. I angle my "vertical" cuts towards the center, then start chopping.
Here's my sacrilege:
A serrated knife is all you need for 99% of the time
So you've got a dull chef's knife, because that is the 90% knife, not a bread knife.
I use it for tomatoes and nobody will ever change my mind.
If you don't have a very sharp knife a serrated one works very nice on tomatoes and bell peppers
Exactly a decent quality serrated will cut a perfectly clean edge on almost all foods