Glenn Reynold's recent inquiry about the best kind of kitchen knives to buy brought him a flurry of replies and opinions. Cooking has as many gearheads as cycling or backpacking and many a kitchen that rarely sees anything more complicated than frozen waffles, nevertheless is equipped with premium appliances and kitchen tools.

My father was a fanatic about knives, having made many himself. I inherited from him the expectation that any knife in my kitchen would be razor sharp at all times. He taught me how to sharpen and hone--an apparently rare skill these days judging by how often I'm asked how I get my knives so sharp. Actually, these days I rare sharpen a knife at all since purchasing a diamond hone. This is actually a sharpening steel empregnated with find diamond dust. Sharpening steel is just supposed to dress the edge, but the diamonds take off a little metal, doing a little sharpening at the same time. I've been using one for several years now with excellent results, however it bears mentioning a caveat: you have to know how to hone a knife in the first place to get consistently good results.

A good knife is a sharp one obviously, but its also one that feels comfortable. This means that you can safely ignore the brand. In fact, my favorite knives were all quite inexpensive.

Recently, I purchased a set of three Santoku knives at Costco for the princely sum of fifty bucks. Its actually pretty easy to spend that for a single knife. The brand was NapaStyle, which is Michael Chiarello's company, and which means that the knives were made in China--not Germany or Switzerland.

A Santoku knife has a wide blade all the way to the point, which looks like whale nose. It often has scallops above and along the edge that reduce the surface area of the knife and make it easier for slices to cleave off the knife. Mine have rubberized handles that make for a secure and comfortable grip. The 10 in. unit is my favorite of all time. I've got other knifes, but other than my boning knife, its my go-to knife 99% of the time.

The boning knife was given to me twenty years ago and is in fact a knife sold to meat packers. It was given to me as a gift after I was seen to be admiring it. A boning knife is actually a far more complicated piece of knife technology as it has a relative thin blade that must be strong but yet retain some flexibility. I've never heard of the manufacturer and neither have you, which disabused me of the idea that only certain major manufacturers could produce a quality knife.

The way you determine the quality of a knife is its design. Good knives are almost always forged (as opposed to stamped) which you can generally tell by the fact that they are tapered all the way from the spine to the cutting edge and have a full "tang", which refers to the part of the knife that attached to the handle. Many manufacturers will expose the edge of the tang all the way around a handle which makes it easy to confirm you have a full tang knife. Ultimately though, these features contribute to the user experience, which is the final arbiter of whether its a good knife or not. A full tang and a fully beveled blade create balance, which makes the knife easier and safer to use. Since forging is a comparatively expensive process, its also good assurance that you have fine steel to work with--no one is going to go to the trouble of forging inexpensive steel.

Starting with a good knife is important, but it will only stay a good knife if you take care of it, which means washing by hand, keeping it clean and honing before every use. There is simply no reason that a good knife won't outlast you and possibly your grandchildren.

My Santoku knives came with blade sheaths which means I can keep them in the drawer without worrying about damaging the edges. I looked for a set recently as a prospective wedding present, but they were out. Hopefully they'll show up in the inventory again.