Jump to content

  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Unusual & mysterious kitchen gadgets

andiesenji

By andiesenji
in Kitchen Consumer

 Share

Recommended Posts

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted (edited)
26 minutes ago, chromedome said:

To me it looks like a carpet knife, which would certainly not be out of place in a hardware store. Perhaps it just got mis-placed in the kitchen section by the receivers?

 

My experience may be limited, but in my sixty plus years I've never seen a carpet knife come in a box marked TS Kitchenware. Also, people here don't have carpets, which limits the demand for carpet knives.

 

It's a kitchen knife!

Edited by liuzhou (log)
  • Like 1

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

rotuts

rotuts

Posted
Posted

well after you dispatched the day's throats

 

using the same motion

 

you could cut the tops off  ' tough fruit '  such as pineapples ?

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

t's a kitchen knife!

Okay, you've got my curiosity up, too. I was going to wait until later in the week to go to my Chinese store downtown and get my tea but I'm going to download this picture and go right now and ask my Chinese restaurant supply man if he knows.

Edited by Tropicalsenior
Self editing (log)
  • Like 2
liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

I can certainly see something like that being used to carve fruits and vegetables into fancy shapes.  Very much like the bird's beak knife I linked to above.

 

You could be right, but it seems to be more curved than any bird's knife I can see on the interwebs.

  • Like 1

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Okay, you've got my curiosity up, too. I was going to wait until later in the week to go to my Chinese store downtown and get my tea but I'm going to download this picture and go right now and ask my Chinese restaurant supply man if he knows.

 

 

I'll be interested too hear what he says, but I've been in hundreds of kitchen supply shops here in China and never seen anything like it.

  • Like 1

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

blue_dolphin

blue_dolphin

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, liuzhou said:

You could be right, but it seems to be more curved than any bird's knife I can see on the interwebs.

 

Yes, yours is more curved than any I have seen.  Perhaps that means it has a much more specialized use than carving.

  • Like 1
Smithy

Smithy

Posted
Posted

Would that knife be useful for peeling palm to get the heart?  My first thought was a bamboo peeler, but I've never heard of eating bamboo that large.

  • Like 1

Nancy Smith, aka "Smithy"
Host, eG Forums - nsmith@egstaff.org

Follow us on social media! Facebook; instagram.com/egulletx

"Every day should be filled with something delicious, because life is too short not to spoil yourself. " -- Ling (with permission)
"There comes a time in every project when you have to shoot the engineer and start production." -- author unknown

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Would that knife be useful for peeling palm to get the heart?  My first thought was a bamboo peeler, but I've never heard of eating bamboo that large.

 

Edible bamboo does come much larger than that knife would cope with. It is usually cut or peeled with a cleaver. In fact, most  people of my acquaintance only have one type of knife - a cleaver.

  • Like 1

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

andiesenji

andiesenji

Posted
  • Topic Starter
Posted (edited)

Grape knife.  Use for harvesting grapes.  I have one I used to use when I had currant bushes, perfect for cutting the bunches off at the stem. 

A similar knife is used for cutting greens.  

I know they grow a lot of grapes in your area because there was a segment on PBS "slow food international" about the grape harvest in a tourist resort that has a grape tasting event.  

Found a reference to it.  

 

Screen Shot 2017-09-27 at 11.27.23 AM.png

Edited by andiesenji (log)
  • Like 3

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted (edited)
35 minutes ago, andiesenji said:

Grape knife.  Use for harvesting grapes.  I have one I used to use when I had currant bushes, perfect for cutting the bunches off at the stem. 

A similar knife is used for cutting greens.  

I know they grow a lot of grapes in your area because there was a segment on PBS "slow food international" about the grape harvest in a tourist resort that has a grape tasting event.  

Found a reference to it.  

 

Screen Shot 2017-09-27 at 11.27.23 AM.png

 

 

 

Despite that rather strange report, grape production is negligible here. I'm sorry but your information is bunk. The overwhelming majority of grapes in China come from Xinjiang in the far west of China which is nearer to Europe than to here. 

I visit the town mentioned in that link at least two or three times a month. Never seen grapes or heard anyone talking about them. I think someone has swallowed an over-optimistic press release. Your link is to a notorious government owned propaganda site full of happy smiling peasants.

I would bet everything that it isn't a grape knife. Who is going to manufacture and sell a grape knife targeted at a place with next to no grapes?

Edited by liuzhou (log)
  • Like 2

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I'll be interested too hear what he says, but I've been in hundreds of kitchen supply shops here in China and never seen anything like it.

Well I hope this helps. When I showed him the picture he took me straight to this knife.

20170927_134704.thumb.jpg.489df86bcbe1ec4b5e29add87366c48c.jpg

It's not as curved as yours but it is similar. He said his mother in China had one with a metal handle just like yours and it is a fruit knife. She uses it both to cut up fruit and harvest fruit out of the garden. the young man that works in the shop with him said that his family had a farm that grew something that he could only describe as mustard, and that the children were given the knives with wooden handles to harvest the plants. I have no idea what part of China they are from. Stupid me, I didn't ask.

20170927_115232.thumb.jpg.20776a810161ce1dd3e31abfa8051487.jpg

Now I have one for you. This little Gizmo was right in the middle of the knives. I had to ask, but can you tell me what it is? It would be considered restaurant equipment.

And they had my tea. all I had to do was show them the translation you sent me and they got it for me. I'm anxious to try it. Thank you so much.

 

  • Like 4
Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
Posted
58 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

Who is going to manufacture and sell a grape knife targeted at a place with next to no grapes?

The Costa Ricans would do it. A while back, I came across a sale bin here that had ice scrapers for your windshield and furnace grates. There's not one furnace in the whole country.

  • Like 4
liuzhou

liuzhou

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

He said his mother in China had one with a metal handle just like yours and it is a fruit knife.

 

Thank you. Yes, a fruit knife was my first guess.

 

I'm sorry, I have no real idea what your find might be.  A menu card holder?

Edited by liuzhou (log)
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

"No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot"
Mark Twain
 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

gfweb

gfweb

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, liuzhou said:

In the course of my perambulations around the city centre today, I came across a small hardware store which is closing down. They mostly stocked kitchen gear of average quality. Of course, I had a look. Everything was the same price. ¥2.00 (30 cents USD). They had little I wanted , but I did pick up a pack of three self-adhesive hooks, then I saw this knife.

 

59cba433dd6cd_knife1.thumb.jpg.dbfb13f11985df4d9e7ce1ac994bceab.jpg

 

It is sharper than I would have guessed but I have no idea what its intended use might be but at that price, I thought "why not?" The young girl who relieved me of two pictures of Chairman Mao had no idea either. She has been taken on temporarily by the liquidators.

The blade is about three inches long. Here it is in my average size hand.

59cba42c24648_knife2.thumb.jpg.329ea5827d5ccfeacc2cf5efa3ce314f.jpg

 

Suggestions as to what it might have been designed for would be very welcome, thanks.

 

 

 

Barrowing hogs

 

Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
Posted (edited)
59 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

A menu card holder?

Yes, exactly right! Although, why it was in with the knives, I have no idea

Edited by Tropicalsenior
Addition (log)
  • Like 1
Tropicalsenior

Tropicalsenior

Posted
Posted

This one will probably be an easy one for some of you. I took a picture of this one in the store because I had one and found it to be completely useless. I gave it to the same friend that got the waffle iron.

20170927_115209.thumb.jpg.284bb09842f6eb09ee58e8fe2aa85db5.jpg

Smithy

Smithy

Posted
Posted

Paper towel holder?  I've seen some similar, but they usually have a central spine to fit up the cardboard roll, and no circular holder at the bottom.

Nancy Smith, aka "Smithy"
Host, eG Forums - nsmith@egstaff.org

Follow us on social media! Facebook; instagram.com/egulletx

"Every day should be filled with something delicious, because life is too short not to spoil yourself. " -- Ling (with permission)
"There comes a time in every project when you have to shoot the engineer and start production." -- author unknown

quiet1

quiet1

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

This one will probably be an easy one for some of you. I took a picture of this one in the store because I had one and found it to be completely useless. I gave it to the same friend that got the waffle iron.

20170927_115209.thumb.jpg.284bb09842f6eb09ee58e8fe2aa85db5.jpg

 

'Looks like a spoon holder I have, but mine has a little dish that sits in the base to prevent the spoon dripping on the countertop?

  • Like 2
Thanks for the Crepes

Thanks for the Crepes

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, quiet1 said:

 

'Looks like a spoon holder I have, but mine has a little dish that sits in the base to prevent the spoon dripping on the countertop?

 

I know what you mean. Like this. I don't think @Tropicalseniorwould withhold a component of the device, though, and it looks sort of tippy to be a spoon or ladle holder without a counterweight. Or maybe the Chinese, practical souls that they seem to be, expect one to provide one's own drip bowl/counterweight?

 

I can't even guess what the device would be useful for otherwise, but I could see it holding a ladle or spoon with a heavy bowl put into place on the top "rack" ring above the "foot". Okay, you know what, it still seems really tippy on that narrow foot. I don't think it's a spoon holder, or else I can really see why she gave it away. xD

 

  • Like 1

> ^ . . ^ <

 

 

 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...