Reddit reviews Victorinox Swiss Army Cutlery Straight Paring Knife, 3.25-Inch
We found 28 Reddit comments about Victorinox Swiss Army Cutlery Straight Paring Knife, 3.25-Inch. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
MULTIPURPOSE PARING KNIFE. Perfect for intricate jobs like peeling or seeding fruit, but versatile enough for bigger tasks like mincing an onion. This paring knife's tapered blade is ground in two directions to hold it's razor sharpness longer.MADE FOR INTRICATE TASKS. This blade has all the chef's knife qualities but in a smaller size for precise cuts and control. The increased maneuverability and dexterity makes it an essential for every kitchen.EASY HANDLING. Features an ergonomic, textured handle with a non-slip grip -- even when wet. This exceptional knife is weighted and balanced for easy handling.KNIFE DIMENSIONS. Stainless steel blade -- 3.25" in length.TRUSTED SWISS QUALITY. Expertly crafted in Switzerland in 1884, Victorinox provides a lifetime guarantee against defects in material and workmanship. Making a lifetime commitment has never been so easy.
First of all, generally nice knifes. They do well, and especially for the price!
I miss the bread knife in this collection, I would take that instead of the carving knife. Chefs knife, bread knife and a utility knife of 3-5 inches.
This will let you:
The chefs knife can replace the carving knife in most situations, where as neither of the other does the work of the bread knife very well.
http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Cutlery-7-Inch-Fibrox-Handle/dp/B0019WZ648/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1417446794&sr=1-4&keywords=victorinox+bread+knife
http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Cutlery-3-25-Inch-Paring-Polypropylene/dp/B0019WXPQY/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1417446896&sr=1-1&keywords=victorinox+small+knife
Total: $141
Don't get #1-3 without getting #4. trust me on that one. As for the knives themselves, Victorinox kitchen knives are excellent: thin blades that are easy to keep super sharp with that Sharpmaker, comfortable handles, well built, light, inexpensive, and designed for real, serious use.
Full knife sets are a scam. You don’t need two different size chef knives and a santoku, you don’t need a serrated paring knife, or any of that crap. You’ll never use them and they’ll just sit there in your knife block, and you will have spent 50% of your money on knives you never touch. Here’s all you need, in your price range:
A henckels 8 inch chef knife - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00004RFMT/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1510433354&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=henckels+chef+knife+8&dpPl=1&dpID=31OX1pDMIvL&ref=plSrch. you’ll use this for 90% of the things you cut. Veggies, meat, whatever.
A tojiro bread slicer. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001TPA816/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1510433463&sr=8-6&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=bread+knife&dpPl=1&dpID=312P9gZ10AL&ref=plSrch. this thing will eat through crusty breads, tough squashes, pineapples, etc, and you can also use it to cut paper thin tomato slices with those sharp teeth. It’s good quality and cheap, I just bought one myself and love it. I accidentally cut my dish brush and a cloth when washing and drying it the first time. That’s how sharp it is.
A victorinox paring knife. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0019WXPQY/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510433648&sr=8-1-spons&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=victorinox+paring&psc=1 - for when you need to do fine cutting work
If you have a good reason, you might add a boning knife or something like that, but these 3 knives are all I use 99.9% of the time. The only other thing to add is a sharpener and honing steel to keep them sharp.
If you’re not a professional chef, you can get away with a cheap (decent) knife sharpener like this one - https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00004VWKQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1510433817&sr=8-10&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=knife+sharpener&dpPl=1&dpID=41bRTplVVXL&ref=plSrch]
You don’t need to spend a bunch of time and money on stones to sharpen your knives properly unless you’re super interested in that sort of thing. Use this sharpener once every few weeks or so and it’ll keep your knives sharp enough to get everything done.
If I were starting a new kitchen from scratch, those are exactly what I’d buy to get started. Treat them well and sharpen them occasionally (except the bread slicer, it’s hard to sharpen but cheap enough to replace every few years when it starts to dull), and they’ll last you a long time.
I would avoid getting a set of knives and focus on the magical trinity which will get you through 99% of cooking jobs.
Chef knife: 90% of your work
Paring knife:5%
Serrated bread knife:4%
The Victorinox knives are widely considered the best bang for your buck and will last you a lifetime if you care for them. Do a search and you'll find thousands of happy customers.
https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Knife-8-Inch/dp/B000638D32/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1525097015&sr=8-3&keywords=victorinox+knife
https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Paring-Knife-Straight-Spear/dp/B0019WXPQY/ref=pd_bxgy_79_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0019WXPQY&pd_rd_r=B1HFSF0A4ZBHH791CVFQ&pd_rd_w=nMNnh&pd_rd_wg=vXPLE&psc=1&refRID=B1HFSF0A4ZBHH791CVFQ
https://www.amazon.com/Mercer-Culinary-Millennia-10-Inch-Bread/dp/B000PS1HS6/ref=pd_bxgy_79_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B000PS1HS6&pd_rd_r=C1FG05XQ9QZEHG4FQWXD&pd_rd_w=iJjCj&pd_rd_wg=L4b1f&psc=1&refRID=C1FG05XQ9QZEHG4FQWXD&dpID=31c-aNrMj2L&preST=_SX300_QL70_&dpSrc=detail
Many professional chefs swear by Victorinox, and this one is the best bang for your under $100 budget by far:
Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef's Knife, 8-Inch Chef
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008M5U1C2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_bvN4Ab4G1PRCN
^ you might want to pick up a paring knife as well, if you don’t already have one...
Victorinox 3.25 Inch Paring Knife
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0019WXPQY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_2xN4Ab0MWEMC7
I'll second Victorinox. They're perfect starter knives. You don't need a whole set, just these three:
https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Knife-8-Inch/dp/B000638D32/
https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Cutlery-Straight-Paring-3-25-Inch/dp/B0019WXPQY/
https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Serrated-5-2533-21-1-piece-Fibrox/dp/B000RLJTLS/
I'll also go against the grain and recommend against a whetstone. They're great if you're really into knives and want your expensive knives to last as long as possible, but they're more time consuming and difficult to learn, so you're less likely to actually sharpen your knives regularly. An electric sharpener does the job just fine. It takes off more material, which shortens the life of the knife, but I don't think that really matters until you're spending $200+ on a knife. Just my two cents.
You might want to try one of these and one of these. There are LOTS of other options for your kitchen knives. Some prefer the Asian style gyuto chef's knife. That particular combo will give you a "known good" set of chef and paring knives to compare with anything else.
No matter what kind of knives you wind up using, you need to be able to sharpen them yourself. Here's my next cutlery purchase. I currently use a Spyderco Sharpmaker and a leather strop with green compound.
EDIT: Fixed my bad link. Was supposed to be one paring and one chef.
What are you looking for in a knife?
If that's hard to answer, that's okay because it means you're a normal, sane (on this point) human being. And what moat normal, sane human beings want out of their kitchen knives are not what professional cooks or serious hobbyists want, so what you should buy ought to be different.
If you want a well made, durable, comfortable, high performance chef knife, you should get a Messermeister Elite. They're thoroughly good knives that I are ideal replacements as communal knives. They come with a variety of handle options and the olive wood Oliva is particularly nice. If you maintain it on a ceramic hone which you use every four or so uses, or just as it starts to dull, and sharpen it yourself or have it sharpened by a decent pro every three to six months, a Messermeister will be good to go forever. A 9" Messermeister Elite or the 8" version, a Mac utility knife, a Victorinox paring knife, and an 8" Fibrox serrated slicer are a complete set that can do most anything. Add in a knife block you can scrounge from a thrift store and an Idahone rod and you're good to go. You could even skip the utility knife, if you had a mind.
Something like the Tojiro DPs will offer you better performing knives, but that comes at a cost. Knives that try to get the most possible performance are harder, thinner knives that will be more likely to chip. The Tojiro in particular is also not held to the same sort of production standards of most German made knives, so the handle might not be entire flush or the rivets might protrude a bit. They're great knives, but are usually best for serious home cooks trying to get the most they can out of their knives or fresh minted line cooks who can't afford better. For a good household knife set they're often not the best possible fit.
It's strictly stupid to not buy QUALITY knives. People buy walmart bullshit chineseium knives Usually for more than it costs to get 3 knives that do 99% of everything a normal chef does in the kitchen. Not to mention they don't hold an edge because theyre made of poor steel and usually aren't very sharp to begin with.
You definitely don't need to spend huge MONEY to get quality.
Get a victorinox set $40 This, $7 this and $30 this Henkel, because the victorinox version is ugly and costs just as much
Throw in a $16 solid steel for good measure.
If my Arithmetic's got me right. That's $93.
If you use these knives twice a week on average for the next 20 years, That's 4 cents a use for some knives, they can continue to last you until you die. So, dying isn't value....
Most knives sold in sets are unnecessary. Most of the Mall brands (Wustof, Henckels, Shun, etc) are middling quality for the price.
He absolutely needs:
It would be nice to have:
The chef's knife is the most important thing. Whatever your budget is, spend most of it on a chef's knife.
The bread knife can be a cheaper one off Amazon. The paring knifes can be too.
Bread knife: link
Paring knife: link
A filet knife from that line will work just fine. For a slicer, I'd hold off. He doesn't need it now, and a very nice slicing knife and fork set is nice to have, and probably outside the budget right now.
For Chef's knife:
Cheaper: Tojiro
More: MAC
Best Brother Ever: Misono
Don't buy a knife set. You don't need those knives. All you need is the following;
One chef's knife: Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef's Knife 40520, 47520, 45520, 5.2063.20 https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000638D32/
One pairing knife: Victorinox Cutlery 3.25-Inch Paring Knife, Small Black Polypropylene Handle https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0019WXPQY/
The basics of a chefs knife and pairing knife is $50. Those are good knives. I have two of the chef's knives and three of the pairing knives. The chefs knives hold their edge very well and are sharpened to 15 degrees.
These two knives are all a basic home cook needs. The rest of the kit is filler to get the piece count up. You won't use the carving fork. You don't know how to use the carbon steel honing rod. You don't filet your own fish. You are likely eatting wonder bread so you don't need a bread knife. Unless you plan murder a roommate you don't need a clever. You ain't eatting steak so you don't need steak knives. Heck I eat steak quite a bit and I don't think I need steak knives You need a knife for delicate work and work horse. That is your pairing knife and chefs knife respectively.
After that I would add the following (mind you I am not happy with the price on the sharpener, but it's a fairly good one, just make sure you get one to sharpen asian knives or 15 degrees);
One pair of kitchen shears: Messermeister DN-2070 8-Inch Take-Apart Kitchen Scissors https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000VS6CAS/
One knife sharpener: Chef's Choice 463 Pronto Santoku/Asian Manual Knife Sharpener https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B002JIMVS0/
One bread knife: Mercer Culinary 10-Inch Wide Bread Knife https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B000PS1HS6/
I consider these the next purchases because eventually you need some scissors dedicated to kitchen use, and maybe ones that will cut small bone and are easy to clean after use on raw meat. The shears are amazing. Blew me away.
The sharpener because you need to maintain your knives. Keeping your knives sharp is safer and makes them a joy to work with. The above knives come razor sharp and will last you a while before needing a proper sharpening. I don't own that particular sharpener but it ranks high in reviews. I have a more expensive automatic sharpener from chef's choice which I used to regrind my sister's knives to a 15 degree edge. I can't recommend it to everyone because it's $200. It was a splurge on my part and not needed. A manual sharpener is all the average person needs. It takes the guess work out of getting the angle right. Again if you have the knives on this list make sure you get a sharpener for 15 degrees or it might be labelled as Asian style.
Eventually you will be off the wonder bread and maybe baking your own. You need a bread knife then to slice in nicely. A bread knife is also handy for cutting cake and other delicate things you don't want to smoosh. That bread knife is solid. You want a knife that will glide through bread without crushing it or tearing it. The key to that is tooth spacing. I think this one is just about perfect.
Other knives are useful in the kitchen. I would get your specialized knives next, such as a carving knife or fillet knife. The above five things I consider core before you get other stuff. You can carve and fillet with a chefs knife. I cook way more than the average person and get away with the above five items. In fact before I would buy specialized knives I would get another chefs knife and another pairing knife. The only other type of knife I own is a santoku style chefs knife which I prefer for chopping vegetables because in school I owned a keep shitty one and got used to the style.
As always do your own research, check the prices on Amazon with camelcamelcamel and check the reviews with a tool like review meta.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0019WXPQY/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1473567331&sr=8-2&pi=SX200_QL40&keywords=victorinox+paring+knife&dpPl=1&dpID=31-3k5SJDRL&ref=plSrch
Lately, I'm really loving the idea of buying none "name-brand" knives like Shun, Global, even germans as they seem to be charging lots of money for the name. I think Shun is the best/worst example of this.
I'm actually going to get one of these Tojiro gyutou knives because it sounds like an incredible deal. I love my Misono Swedish Steel but Tojiro might make a bang-up gift. More props to wangston1 as you really shouldn't spend that much money on a bread knife.
As for paring, I've been using this Victorinox Paring with great success. It is not very easy to sharpen but its not difficult to keep sharp with steel. Oh and its $7!
Oh and one last thing. I love my carbon steel knife, but it does have a patina that my wife says makes it look dirty all the time. It's just something to keep in mind when picking types of steel.
Good luck!
My essentials recommendation:
Things you may want to add:
You could get every one of those for $195. You can also upgrade that Chef's knife to something a little fancier and stick with all of the other victorinox stuff and hit your budget.
I just read this and found out what you're using the knife for, in which case I change my recommendation to a Victorinox paring knife, making your total purchase (including the sharpener) around $16: http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Cutlery-3-25-Inch-Paring-Polypropylene/dp/B0019WXPQY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419566691&sr=8-1&keywords=victorinox+paring+knife
tongs: https://www.amazon.com/Winco-UT-12-Utility-Heavyweight-Stainless/dp/B001VZ8QKY/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1537374995&sr=8-18&keywords=tongs
knife: https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Knife-8-Inch/dp/B000638D32/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1537375024&sr=1-4&keywords=victorinox+knife
and
https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Paring-Knife-Straight-Spear/dp/B0019WXPQY/ref=sr_1_11?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1537375024&sr=1-11&keywords=victorinox+knife
get a quality try ply pan(all-clad, tranimoniom(sp? walmart))
Congrats! It's the tool that'll make the single-biggest difference in your cooking: a good knife can be used for many more tasks than a bad one, you'll be more accurate with your prep, and you'll just be more effective in the kitchen because you get more enjoyment from using it!
Re: your other post about the chef's knife, there are obviously a billion options at every price point, but there are also some sure-fire safe places to start. German knives like your Wusthof that use Solingen metal are deservedly popular. Solingen is a city in Germany that's famous for making knives, swords, scissors, razors, everything. Seki City is the Japanese equivalent. You can nerd out about this stuff all day long, but the only important bit is that Seki steel holds a sharp edge just a little longer than Solingen. Anthony Bourdain recommended Japanese knives for home chefs for this reason; not because they're better, they aren't, but because casual cooks are less likely to take frequent care of their equipment than cooks who use it every day for their job. You take care of your German knives? They're wonderful.
Wushtof and Henckels are the most visible German brands; Global is probably the Japanese brand most US shoppers are used to seeing. Moving up a bit in price, but without getting unreasonable, are Shun and Mac, two very good Japanese brands. I have knives by both—an 8" santoku-style Shun and a 10" French-style Mac. You'll almost certainly be able to find both on deep sale for Black Friday, if you need to give your parents a hint ;). At the other end of the price spectrum, possibly the single-most popular chef's knife in the US that didn't come in a set as part of a wedding present is the Victorinox Fibrox 8" or 10". Professional cooks who don't bring their personal knife collections to work use these. They cost about forty bucks and they're awesome. They don't look awesome. The handles are molded plastic, the blade tangs don't have a sexy reveal all the way down like any of the other knives we're talking about here, and if you let yourself get bothered by this sort of thing—which is OK, people do—they can feel like something you'd use if you were working back of house at The Golden Corral. But. Like most staples in any industry, there is a reason that everyone, everyone uses them. They're sharp, reliable, inexpensive and easy to replace if needed. I honestly recommend that every home cook have at least one, even if you also have a fetish-level artisan kitchen knife collection, because you never know when you're going to need to break down a raw chicken and finely slice a head of fennel at the same time. In fact I tend to compulsively order their 3.25" paring knives anytime I need to bump a purchase over the free-shipping threshold on Amazon, because I know you can never have enough of the damn things. They're like flashlights or AA batteries.
That's a lot of text in defense of a cheap knife, but those other knives sell themselves, and TBH a lot of it's overkill. Between my Shun santoku and my Mac, I recommend the Mac for two reasons. One, the Shun is just way thicker than the Mac, and regardless of which knife you go with that's something to consider. If the top of the knife is more than a couple of millimeters thick, then it doesn't matter how sharp it is; it's going to give you a headache when you try to slice something that's taller than it—like a large squash or a really big sweet potato, for instance. The Mac is a much slimmer knife, which makes it more useful. Two, the santoku thing is kind of a fad. Blame the Food Network, I guess. Santoku knives attempt to sit the fence between French-style knives and Chinese chef's knives. Chinese chef's knives are cleavers and are, to be fair, the Swiss Army Knife of knives. They do everything. They are badass. But unless you're going to go full-tilt with a proper Chinese knife (just about anything that Dexter-Russell makes, by the way, is legit) then just get a French chef's knife. It's worked the way it works for as long as it works for a reason. The santoku's height is meant to simulate a cleaver, meaning in practice that you can safely turn it on its side and bang it with your fist to smash something like garlic. French chefs have been doing that just fine for centuries.
Depending on the size of your hands (you said you're a teenager, so you're probably still growing) I think an 8" knife is probably great for you. 10" is more the norm in a professional kitchen, but even 7" is usually more than enough for anything you're going to come across at home. If you don't feel like waving around a sword, go with one of these.
Welcome to your new addiction!
Don't buy one of those big sets in a block. You won't use most of it, and most of them that aren't expensive are really crappy.
This is your best value for a no nonsense Chef's knife: https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Knife-8-Inch/dp/B008M5U1C2 Get a pairing knife (https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Paring-Knife-Straight-Spear/dp/B0019WXPQY) and a serrated (https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Serrated-5-2533-21-1-piece-Fibrox/dp/B000RLJTLS) and you're good to go for almost everything you'll do cooking. You can often find this brand on sale even locally, and the combo should come in under half your budget.
Very similar to the Victorinox knife I sometimes carry https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Paring-Knife-Straight-Spear/dp/B0019WXPQY only wayyyyyy cheaper.
TLDR: I made a shopping list at the end.
​
I think most people who are serious about having a good set of knives would advise you to not actually buy knives in a set. It is useful to keep in mind that most knife sets, especially at your budget range or lower priced, are sets for marketing reasons and not a value buy. Certain traits like the number of items included in the set make them seem like you are getting a lot of items for your money, and then shortcuts are taken to increase the number of items versus the quality items. This is a marketing trick. It sounds like you are getting more value the higher the number of stated pieces there are.
For example of typical cost saving shortcuts used in sets: you typically want a bread knife to be 9 or 10 inches, or a 8 inch chef's knife, but shorter lengths will be typical when in a set. You probably don't need to be concerned about having the 6 or 8 steak knives of low quality (again, to increase the number of pieces in the set to make it seem like a good value). In fact, just 3 or 4 high quality knives will perform everything you need of them. For the most part, you can get by on 90% or 95% of what you might do with just a workhorse chef's knife if you need to.
​
My recommended path therefore is to build your own set. This also has the benefit of letting you pick and choose for each specific piece rather than being locked into one brand or one style, and can allow you to budget things out to pick up a quality piece when you can afford it rather than thinking you should have everything all at once.
In order of how you should acquire your pieces:
First, knives are tools that are subject to degradation in performance as they are used. It is important that you mitigate this by investing in protecting the edge of the knife when not in use and that you are able to regularly maintain the edge. You will want either a good wood block or knife edge guards or a good drawer holder to keep your knives safe from non-use related damage. I would lean towards definitely having a wood block or wood drawer holder. It is probably worth planning for the future here, so get what you need. This item should last for a long time so the money will not be wasted.
Look for something that will hold everything you eventually need. Make sure there is a slot that will hold a honing rod. You might want a kitchen shears in the future, so a slot for that is good, too. Ideally, there will be more than one slot that will handle a larger knife (2 inch wide or larger, for more than one chef's knife, santoku, etc.) and if it is an angle block the high positions will be long enough for 10 inch or longer knives. I really like the 17 slot options from cutlery and more. These are normally $50 or so, but can go on sale multiple times per year. Again - this will last you for your lifetime so find what you want for your ultimate plan and go for it.
Again, since it is not worth having a knife that doesn't work, you will need to maintain the edge. You do not need to be an expert sharpener, as you can find this as a service, but regular honing is a good way to only need this service maybe once or twice per year. Keep in mind that a sharp knife is safer than a dull knife, because you can stay in control and not need to use excess force with a sharp knife. An ER visit because of a dull knife will cost a lot more than what you spend on a good knife that can be kept sharp. You can shop around for this, but I would still look for something of quality. The Shun honing steel has a nice feature where it has a built in angle guide (this is at 16 degrees, but that is very close to common for a lot of knives).
So now that you are finally ready to look at knives, you want to start out worried only about 3 good knives: A chef's knife, a bread knife, and a paring knife. You do not need to spend a lot on the bread or paring knives to get you going, in fact some of the options at low price ranges for these are really good performers.
For a bread knife, the Mercer Millennia 10 inch wavy can be found for about $15. (as mentioned before, you'd likely get a shorter length in a normal set in a big box store). For a paring knife, a Victorinox 3.25 inch will be just a few dollars. It's nothing fancy and perhaps the handle seems small and thin, but for getting going this works great.
The chef's knife will be your main workhorse, easily taking care of 90% or more of what you are doing in the kitchen. It is very worthwhile to invest in this piece.
It is also worthwhile, in my opinion, to have more than one chef's knife (or mix with other workhorse knives, i.e. a nakiri or santoku, etc.). I would recommend making a long term plan to save for a quality piece in this category eventually (and with my approach of your knife block being able to handle more than one of a main type of knife you will not need to worry about storing it safely). Eventually you might want to look at the $130+ options in this category, but that is for the future.
In the meantime, with the budget range, I would go for the Victorinox Fibrox Pro 8 inch chef's knife. Usually around $35-$45. I have knives 3 times as expensive but still grab this if I need to swap to a clean knife or think I will need to be a bit more rough with the chopping.
​
Current Shopping List (prices subject to change with sales/economics):
This would fit in on the low range of your current stated budget and set you on a good path towards adding pieces (because of the knife block choice) once you can determine what you want and save towards them.
Keep in mind that if you can set yourself up to cook at home more and enjoy cooking and all of that, you will automatically shift your budget towards being able to keep improving your home cooking experience as you save from not eating out and wasteful food practices, etc.
​
Good luck!
I have a few of these, and they're nice .
My favorite pairing knife
magnetic spice jars
I bought mine at Ikea :)
Here are the knives I recommend.
Victorinox 3.5 inch pairing knife https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Cutlery-3-25-Inch-Paring-Polypropylene/dp/B0019WXPQY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1480391266&sr=8-2&keywords=paring+knife+victorinox
Wustoff Hollow Ground Santoku https://www.amazon.com/Wusthof-Classic-5-Inch-Hollow-Santoku/dp/B0001WN9OG/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1480391489&sr=8-2-fkmr2&keywords=wustoff%2Bhollow%2Bground&th=1
Tojiro DP 8.2 inch, it's a carbon steel knife so it will stay sharp for a very long time. https://www.amazon.com/Tojiro-DP-Gyutou-8-2-21cm/dp/B000UAPQGS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480391699&sr=8-1&keywords=tojiro+dp
Also just keep the boning knife from her current set, it really doesn't matter. If it doesn't have one you can just get this one: https://www.amazon.com/Dexter-Russell-P94818-Boning-Knife/dp/B00149GFAA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1480391773&sr=8-2&keywords=dexter+boning+knife
Victorinox paring knife is amazing, they're less Han 10$ and they stay razor sharp for a while, I first heard about them on /r/buyitforlife and it's the most used knife in my kitchen. Sorry I'm giving you a link like this I'm on mobile [http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Cutlery-3-25-Inch-Paring-Polypropylene/dp/B0019WXPQY]
If I were you, I'd say get this paring knife and use the rest of your money on the best Chef's knife you can find that meets your specifications.
Most good quality chef knives will last, at a minimum, several decades with the proper care and maintenance. The real questions are around your preferences. Check out the sidebar for our standard FAQ, give us your answers, and we can make recs from there.
I recognize that knife!
Rule #1 of kitchen knives: you absolutely do not need some sort of fancy/expensive knife block set. It's a waste of money. As far as budget knives go, Victorinox is a staple of professional kitchens and a great value. You can absolutely get by with a chef's knife (6 and 8 inch if you want to splurge), couple of paring knives, bread knife (the below wavy edge bread knife is magic and the best thing I've ever bought for my kitchen), and maybe a boning knife if you want to get really fancy. If you want to get a little more invested I love my Global G2...and then I've filled the rest of my needs with Victorinox and hang them on a magnetic strip.
Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef's Knife, 8-Inch Chef's FFP https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008M5U1C2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_wummCb5Z58D5V
Victorinox 6 Inch Fibrox Pro Chef's Knife https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000CFDD5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_PxmmCbPCXVM5J
Victorinox 47600 3.25 Inch Paring Knife with Straight Edge, Spear Point, Black, 3.25" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0019WXPQY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_3ummCbDDYYBRW
Victorinox Cutlery 9-Inch Wavy Edge Bread Knife, Black Polypropylene Handle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0019WZ7EW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4vmmCb12C6A0V
Victorinox 5.6603.15 6" Fibrox Pro Curved Boning Knife with Semi-Stiff Blade B0000CF94L, Silver/Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000CF94L/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_wvmmCbN928MB7
What length did you get? I have several and I strongly prefer my 8" to my 10".
I also use a Chef's Choice sharpener because hey, these are really inexpensive knives. Yet still my oldest on is 14 years old. So I would not be worried about removing a lot of material or sharpening a lot.
When you say paring do you mean:
https://www.amazon.com/Kuhn-Rikon-4-Inch-Nonstick-Colori/dp/B000GZDY6Q
Or
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0019WXPQY/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469729638&sr=8-2&pi=SX200_QL40&keywords=victorinox+paring+knife&dpPl=1&dpID=31-3k5SJDRL&ref=plSrch
Because I have some knives like the former and they are for imho cutting small things two handed on a cutting board. The latter are very cheap, very thin...should be getting a multi-pack for very little $$ and they are much better for me for things like peeling or cutting while eating etc etc. i use them all the time and just throw them away and replace them yearly. Not an investment.