Reddit mentions of Victorinox 8" Chef's Knife

Victorinox are great and well priced:

Victorinox 8" Chef's Knife https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0011FEIL0

Seriously, get a decent knife. Your food deserves it.

I would grab an 8" Victorinox fibrox chef's knife to start, tough to go wrong with that one. Most would then recommend grabbing a smaller knife like a paring knife or utility knife, and a 10" bread knife. If that sounds good and you don't want to think too hard about it, this should do the trick. If you want to think about it a little more, read on.

The chef's knife is almost always a must-have and the Victorinox is pretty tough to beat for the price. I like a heavier bread knife because I find mine useful for large, tough things like cabbage, but if you don't see yourself doing that type of thing, the Tojiro F-737 Bread Slicer is really nice and really inexpensive. For something a little heavier, the Mercer Millennia 10" bread knife won't be as graceful but should tackle anything and is equally inexpensive. Finally, the small knife. I'm not the biggest fan of traditional small paring knives because the only things I use them for, like hulling strawberries, coring tomatoes, and eyeing potatoes, is better done with a bird's beak knife and they're too small to do anything else. I find a 5-6 inch utility knife is more useful for when I want to handle small things. So the set I would get would look something like:

Chef's, $34.99

Bread, $13.39

Bird's beak, Wusthof because the small Victorinoxes can feel a little flimsy, $9.95

Utility $25.50

That comes out to the beautiful price of $83.83 which leaves a little room to get the perfect set of edge guards if you don't already have a block, or a smooth honing steel for that perfect edge. Now, someone please drag me through the mud for recommending a bird's beak in a starter kit.

Henkels and Wustoff are sort of the OG "great knives" manufacturers. Global is also well thought of. Some people are huge fans of the cheap plastic handles chef knives you can get on amazon.

The thing i would say is that it is 100% worth it to go somewhere that you can hold the knives in your hands before you buy. there are few things worse than buying a $300 set of knives only to find out you hate the handles

as for cookware Jest2 is right you cannot go wrong with all-clad for skillets or saute pans that will see a lot of direct wear. but things like a large enamle dutch oven you can get away with THIS cheaper lodge option. I also feel like you can probably look at less expensive stock pots (or pasta pots) because they just don't wear out.