Big Scary Knife Kit

They kindly added the Le Cordon Bleu logo
to the outside of our bags, which I love

Our knife kits are a huge part of our learning experience at Le Cordon Bleu.  I love mine, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t afraid of it at all.  It’s basically attached to me the entire time that I’m in school for a practical, and it makes me feel safer when I walk home in the dark. 

During our orientation, we gathered in a lab kitchen for a Chef to go through our knife kits with us, making sure we had every piece and knew what each knife was generally used for.  As pastry students, we sort of got a little bonus: Many of the knives in our kit are used solely for cuisine cooking, so we didn’t need to bring those to school.  They’re not “free” (since the price of the kit was included in our tuition), but they are extra.  These, for example, aren’t used in our pastry classes:

From left to right: Trussing Needle (for tying up poultry),
Turning Knife (for "turning vegetables), De-Boning Knife,
Meat Fork, and Cleaver.

Even though we don’t need all the knives, that doesn’t mean that my kit is empty.  I’ve added some extra tools from home that come in handy in pastry classes: a few rubber spatulas, a ruler, disposable piping bags, my smaller icing spatulas, and an extra plastic scraper.

A few included tools we use the most:

• Electric Scale, for measuring all of our ingredients, as well as dough portions.
• Paring Knife, for general cutting needs, like measuring butter
• Plastic Scraper, an incredibly handy tool foreign to most of us before we started our classes, this little guy is used for everything from cutting and mixing dough to scooping ingredients and scraping bowls clean
•  “Super Slicer”, technically a bread knife (though “Super Slicer” is its real name), this serrated wonder is used to torte cakes.  We’ve only used it once, but I can tell that it will become more and more common soon.
• Piping Bags, in two sizes, we were given reusable ones with a variety of tips.  I still prefer disposable, and finally got some Wilton ones to keep in my bag along with these.
• Little Fruit Tools, including a peeler, corer, two zesters, and a melon baller.
• Whisk
• Magnets, for sticking the parchment paper to the baking sheets in the oven, since our ovens have a fan inside

A tour of the inside of the kit:

My fruit tools: big zester, melon baller, peeler, little zester,
corer, tongs

The scale and paring knife: the first two tools
I always grab at the beginning of every
practical class, because I know I'll need them

The "Pastry Compartment," complete with
kitchen scissors, my rubber spatulas, tasting
silverware, and a zipper pocket with whisk,
brush, thermometer (which is still unused),
magnets, and plastic scraper (at the top left)

The big knives.  From right to left: Super Slicer, Chef Knife,
knife sharpener, Offset Spatula, Spatula, Random-Knife-I-
Keep-In-There-Just-In-Case

The kits are heavy!  Mine weight approximately 22 pounds without the meat cleaver and other cuisine knives, so I use the shoulder strap when I need to carry it around.  It’s pretty convenient – especially when we climb the four flights of stairs to our usual practical lab kitchen.

The knives are SO sharp.  At least two of my friends have cut themselves because the knife slipped while putting it back in the blade protector and the blade just had the tiniest whisper against their skin, resulting in a substantial cut.  I have yet to cut myself, but it’s bound to happen soon.  Luckily, in pastry we use our knives for things like cutting butter off the block to measure it, scrape chocolate shavings, divide dough into appropriately-sized portions, and score designs on the top of pastries. 

Each knife has the brand's sticker
on the handle

Each blade is engraved with this logo

The bag is made of water-proof (and lemon tart-proof, as I discovered a couple weeks ago) fabric, has three zipper pockets that cause the bag to fold flat, and has the Le Cordon Bleu and Wüsthof logos on the front.  I can tell that the bag, along with all of the super-sharp knives, is going to last a very very long time.  I’m glad – I can tell that the knife kit will grow on me, as I have already become kind of attached to it.  I’m trying to figure out how to pack the essentials to bring home over Christmas to bake for my friends and family, as I realized that there’s no way I’d be able to carry it onto a plane.