Martha Stewart Says You Only Need These 3 Knives In Your Kitchen

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Martha Stewart has spent years learning food inside out. Long before "Martha Stewart Living" first aired in the '90s, she was running a catering service from her home in Connecticut. Today, she's practically the godmother of home cooking experts. So when Stewart claims you can do most knife work in a kitchen with only three knives, people pay attention. According to her, those three knives are the chef's knife, serrated knife, and paring knife.

Everything begins with the most versatile knife in this arsenal: the chef's knife. (Anthony Bourdain also knew the importance of a chef's knife, and his favorite one retails for $150.) A quality chef's knife can cut through most thick pieces of meat, split and break down chickens, dice fruits big and small, and cut down the middle of the toughest squash.

While a chef's knife can do almost everything, there are situations where it falls short. The serrated knife handles many of those situations. It's commonly known as a bread knife because the serrations allow it to grab onto bread, soft or tough, and cut through it without destroying the structure of the loaf. It's really the only knife that will cut through a prepared sandwich without making a mess and is also ideal for fruits with soft insides like pineapples and tomatoes. And finally, there's the paring knife. This small utility knife is perfect for small fruits and vegetables. It gives you control and makes quick jobs of peeling an orange or slicing an apple.

Martha Stewart's advice reduces the amount of space knives take up in your kitchen, as well as the money you'll spend on those knives. After a little research and lots of practice, your chef's knife will have you slicing like a pro without losing a finger. Some brands trusted by pros include Victorinox, Dexter-Russell, and Mercer. And all three have relatively inexpensive options of chef and serrated knives. As for the paring knife, renowned chef David Chang prefers cheap ones with plastic handles. If you shop wisely, you can get all three knives for under $100. And if these three do most of the work, you certainly don't need a knife block set.

Knife block sets sell you a pain-free knife shopping experience. They promise every knife you could need and sell you on quantity. That's why the storage block itself always counts as one of the pieces. Unfortunately, this just means you end up with knives that are either redundant or not the right size, like a bread knife too short to cut through a large loaf of sourdough. And then there's the block itself, which is simply not practical compared to a magnetic strip to keep your knives organized and accessible. Kitchens are already filled with far too much clutter. It's time to ditch the knife block and pick up the three knives Martha Stewart, Gordon Ramsay, and other chefs recommend to get the job done in any kitchen.