21 hours ago, weinoo said:So, @btbyrd, do you use like 6 different knives when, say, cutting up and boning a chicken? Butterflying a loin of pork? Etc.
Are you field dressing game? Slaughtering partridge?
Help me understand.
Not really. All the knives are more or less purpose driven, so I tend to use one or two knives per task. Use one knife to cut off a fish's head and remove its filets, another knife to remove the skin and portion it. Use one knife to remove the bones from a rib roast, another to slice it. For butchery knives, I have two Western debas (one large, one small), two poultry knives (one large, one small), one knife for boning mammals, and two western style boning knives (one stiff, one flexible) that I got way back before I got seriously into kitchen knives.
The top knife is a Tojiro DP 240 Western deba. It has the profile of a chef's knife, but is almost 5mm thick the whole way down. Debas are technically fish butchery knives, but a 240 deba with a double bevel is a monster knife that is game for almost any abuse. For butchery tasks, I use it whenever I need to go through poultry bones, like for bone-in fried chicken. I also use it to separate cooked ribs. But it's good for pretty much any heavy kitchen use. A true multi-tasker. Everything else more of a specialist knife. The smaller Western deba is used to take the head and filets off fish. Because it's double bevel, it's sturdy enough to deal with poultry bones, but I generally use the big one for that. I have used it to trim my Christmas tree for the past several years.
Under the big deba are the poultry knives, a garasuki and a honesuki. The larger garasuki is super thick and useful for breaking down turkeys and ducks (and also chickens) while the smaller honesuki is thinner and primarily suited to chickens (though it can also be used for trimming). I took a pretty deep dive on yakitori a couple years back, and these knives are the backbone of yakitori butchery. The hankostu is for boning out beef, lamb, and pork. I use it the few times a year I French a rib roast, debone a lamb leg, and to remove the bone from the occasional pork shoulder.
I have 3 slicers/sujihiki. A 300mm one that's very stiff, a 270mm hollow ground one with a good amount of flex, and a lasery thin 210mm suji/petty. They're all useful for different things. The small one lives on my knife block and gets used alongside my normal chef's knives in daily rotation. It's good for trimming, butterflying, and for slicing smaller items like cooked chicken breast or whatever. The flexy suji is useful for removing the skin from fish and portioning it. It's also a good slicer for things like country ham and smoked salmon. The longest, stiffest suji is my carving knife for large roasts. It's also good for slicing raw fish for crudo or nigiri or whatever.
The other two knives in the portioning/slicing section are just chef's knives that also work well for butchery-adjacent tasks. The big one has a balance point way out front, and this makes it great for slicing, say, a striploin into steaks or a pork loin into chops. It's also my go-to watermelon knife. The shorter one with the drop-point has an extremely flat profile and is thicker than many of my other chef's knives, exhibiting zero flex. This makes it work very well as a slicer for both meat and fish. But the flat profile also makes it an absurdly good chopper. It's a great knife for cutting vegetables.
Do I need all these knives? No. Are they the best tools for their respective jobs? Pretty much.
20 hours ago, rotuts said:I might have more than 12 knives.
...
these days
I think this is my favorite poem of yours.
