What is a utility knife for the kitchen? Basically, there are 2 knives any chef needs- a chef knife and a paring knife. A utility knife lives in between those knives. Say you’re in the kitchen slicing a tomato or some onion to make a sandwich. Do you really want to go to the trouble of busting out your ten inch chef knife? Not really. Or say you’re preparing some chicken breasts and you want to do some fancy garnishing. You don’t necessarily want to dirty your paring knife and your chef knife- you want to keep your kitchen clean! That’s where a utility knife will come in handy in your kitchen. Whether you’re a pro or home chef.

 

Before we get into the details about New West’s kitchen utility knife, let’s get one thing out of the way. As far as slicing that chicken breast goes, the Phoenix petty is an absolute dream. In addition to being razor sharp, our utility knife is extremely thin. Believe it or not, you can have a thick knife that is razor sharp, but feels dull because the blade is not very thin. When using the Phoenix petty, sometimes it literally feels like the blade is not merely ‘slicing’ it’s ‘sliding’ through whatever it’s cutting.

 

We can get our knife so thin (and still be durable) because we use a pattern-welding technique commonly referred to as ‘Damascus steel.’ We’ll get to that more later. Let’s back up and formally introduce you to the ultimate kitchen utility knife.

 

The ‘Phoenix Petty’ knife is based on a traditional Japanese blade shape used for many utility tasks- peeling, paring, coring, carving… and as we said before… SLICING chicken breasts. In the Japanese kitchen, the utility or petty knife performs all of the tasks of a Western paring knife, but is longer and therefore, useful for other tasks as well.

 

With a petty in the kitchen you may find yourself neglecting to reach into the drawer for the ‘other’ knife. If you could only have one knife in the kitchen, the petty would be the best bet. Other kitchen utility knives get a bad rap. There’s a good reason for this. They use inferior steel and have a poor design which makes them rather irrelevant. They do nothing well. They’re too big for a paring and too small for real chopping and they're too thick to really have an advantage for slicing. The phoenix petty puts lesser utility knives too shame, and hopefully, out of your kitchen.

 

The secret is in the steel. And it’s really no secret at all, you get what you pay for. In our case, we design a knife that is ultra-thin and lightweight. This means, although it is a little longer than a paring knife, it feels agile in the hand because it’s light. It also means it’s better at certain larger tasks than a Chef knife (slicing chicken breasts, for example) because a full size chef knife will never be as thin as our utility knife. Because an 8 or 10 inch knife needs to be thicker to maintain its stability and not fall apart.    

 

So how do we do it?

 

The swirling pattern on the blade is commonly referred to as ‘Damascus steel.’ A more appropriate term is ‘pattern-welded’ steel. 16 layers of steel are forge-welded to both sides of the tool steel core of the knife. When the layers of steel are pressed together, they form this natural, beautiful pattern as the grains from the different layers emerge. The effect is not merely aesthetic. A tougher, more durable steel (410 Damascus) is used for the outer layers. This allows us to use a harder steel for the cutting core (AUS-8) which might be too brittle to be durable were it not for the outer protective layers. The overall effect is that by using the pattern-welding technique, we can make an ultra-thin, lightweight blade that is still tough enough to withstand the rigours of everyday use.

That’s pretty much the secret. Ultra-thin and ultra light. That’s true utility. A kitchen knife that literally feels like it slides through foods like butter.

 

People think that steel is all that matters in knife performance. It’s not true. Blade geometry is also important. At New West we combine both to the optimum degree to give you the best performing utility knife in anybody’s kitchen.

 

The Phoenix petty is a light-weight, agile kitchen utility knife with the serious edge necessary for delicate work and the durability to handle some of the heavier tasks of a full on chef knife. Did we mention it's gorgeous as well?