My brilliant and beautiful wife was reading this thread over my shoulder. You should heed her opinions (synopsis below).
Rick, with all that great cooking you do, you deserve good knives. No real quibbles with the choices so far (We trust
Cook's Illustrated and they really like the Forschner). We thought they were too light.
You should try to go and handle some knives before you buy them, if possible. We have decent-quality Henkels knives that we've had for MANY years.
You might not need a whole set. Honestly, we hardly ever use our boning knife. Get a really good 8" chefs knife and a really good 4" paring knife.
I've had really good luck with the
Chef's Choice Electric sharpener we have. They make other, newer models that might be even better. I don't have the discipline to use a steel all the time, but this thing works great. I just sharpen all the knives about once a week or as needed. Takes just a few minutes, and we are very satisfied with the sharpness and durability of the resulting edge.
