Is the paring knife truly essential?

[Prawncrackers]

In fact the row of slots in my knife block designated for steak knives (not really a kitchen tool, in my view) is filled with extra paring knives.

That's exactly my set-up too, who actually uses those steak knife slots for steak knives eh?!

I used to have a macho chef knife thing where all prep had to be done with the one chef knife (Chinese or Western). In fact the thing was to do the whole cutting prep without letting go of the knife at all. It was a little OCD I know but I got pretty proficient at it. Nowadays having mellowed a little I always pull out the chef knife and a parer. It just makes life easier. I have some cheapo blunt as hell parers used for prising stuff and general abuse. But then I also have a rather fancy little 90mm nenox number which is great for cutting in the hand. It's so thin that it hardly ever needs to be sharpened. I also have an odd shaped Itou 130mm parer that is the perfect mango knife (i eat a lot of mango alright) because of it's very shallow profile. You can follow a large mango stone around without wasting any of the flesh. I can get two perfect halves of mango and nothing is left on the stone - impossible to do with a chef knife.

[Chris Amirault]

A paring knife is close to indispensable if you make yourself a cocktail every night. You can do most things with other equipment -- halve the fruit with a chef's knife, flick out the seeds with something pointy and easy to handle, peel the rind with a vegetable peeler, trim it into shape... -- but only a paring knife can do all of them easily.

[Richard Kilgore]

Indispensable - no; convenient for some things - yes. I am sure I use my chef knife for things many people would use a paring knife, but I would not want to do without it. Many, many years ago I got by with just a Chinese cleaver and a paring knife.