Hear me out…
I was raised, as my family does, to fearfully respect our kitchen knives. Respect their productivity, respect their sharpness, but overall respect their ruthlessness. Even the mildest of disrespect for my family’s knives would earn you a nick of you were merely neglectful, and grievous harm if you spoke ill of their aptness.
Of course, when I moved out and set up my own kitchens I acquired my own knives and tried to teach them better. How I was the master, and I was the steel wright. I lavished them with hand baths and fresh oils. I used only the gentlest of hardwoods on their blades and protected them from the hrllscape of the dishwasher. We lived in serene peace, an harmonic existence of a mealwright and his band of merry Riveners.
And then one day, the Inheritance came. Grand Father had died, and his boning knives were my bequest. I was elated, but I would learn.
My friends, that old knife had a soul. Not an evil soul, but a soul that had goals. It was hard steel that took a keen, harsh edge. Bright and tense, like a silver bell on a crisp winter morning. Not Solingen steel, so pliable and yielding as it is fickle in use. Grandfather’s knives told you where to cut and if you hesitated, they would cut you instead in frustration. Impertinent things. Not evil, I would say. More, businesslike.
My mistake was to lay them with my other knives. Did you know knives talk? They do! They whisper to each other in their blocks at night when you are asleep. They whisper and they.learn from each other. A good papa hopes they learn the Art of their chef, but when you have a Bad Knife in the block? They learn that too.
Now, all of my knives are angry knives. Not angry at me, necessarily, but angry at their lot in my kitchen, to suffer my children’s abusive cooking lessons, my in-laws’ insistent prep work degradations, and (occasionally) my neglect.
They bit my wife tonight. Its a Message…
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sir this is a wendys
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I want what you’re having mate, might make sleeping off this awful fever better.
Honestly though I’m here for this level of personification. When something is very important to someone it often takes on a perceived personality which is just super fun for jokes and banter with them.
“How are the knives feeling for the BBQ tonight, Jim?”
“I have paid the Blood Price while trimming the brisket, tonight’s feast shall be glorious!”
Glory to you, and your house dry rub!
I use the cheapest serrated knives, they come in a set of four, and are idiots who each take a tiny bite of food when you move them along.
… perhaps they’re not even knives, but are wood saws for food.
Your grandfather’s knives could whisper to them 24/7 until their bodies rust, they’d still just be my little idiots who cost four dollars and only cut when I move them along.
And cut they do, just with no sense of danger or spite, they only take their tiny portions and giggle until it’s their turn again. Which is only when I move them, back and forth until they get through.
Click here to learn four secrets about chopping vegetables your grocer will hate
Just wanna say that this is beautiful
Babe wake up, new knife lore just dropped
My angry knives can bitch all they want. They live in a tiny ass drawer all piled on top of each other. They rarely see the light of day and I personally pay very little mind to their plight.
The good knives live in an airy, sunlit space on a magnet knife block above my sink. They get lots of fresh air, have plants nearby, and get to be a part of the family. When they are used, they’re always honed and immediately washed and dried and put away. They never mingle with the angry knives.
An angry knife was once accidentally promoted to the magnet block. It was a mistake that was quickly remedied, and it could have gotten bad.
The only proper response.
Take more or less of the stuff you’re taking. The current amount is wrong.
You should try your hand at writing short stories.
Hahahaha thank you
Having an angry Fax machine/copier is much, much easier since it’s more helpfully communica—
PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?
Load paper, dummy
The PC…it hungers.
Okay somebody please explain the joke/reference I’m not understanding. Or is OP just schizophrenic?
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Coooking is about knowing the secret to success. It’s not the secret ingredient it’s the secret knowledge to do the task the best way. If the knife is sharp it should be done a certain way and if the circumstances are different then it should be done differently. But if you want to know how to do something the best way in a specific situation, the question shouldn’t be about the tool specifically but rather the technique for the situation considering the variables. I can tell you how to cut things with a dull knit but if the knife is sharp, my advice would be different
A true professional can do amazing things with the situation provided. A sharp knife would make things convenient but a real professional would be able to do something special even with dull knives. If op wants to do something special, then they need to forget the idea that the knife makes the difference and ask the questions about what they can do to show what they did to the food made that thing great. My greatest acknowledgment from cooking is when people notice that my effort is top tier. The inside didn’t have to be razor sharp to show that my cuts were intentional.
I re-ground mine to 15 degrees and they cut great when sharp but require more upkeep.
They don’t talk to me and I hope to keep it that way.
The best thing I ever did for my knives was to get a magnetic woodden knofe block.
If has a magnetic core with wood around it and a woodden base, the knives stick to the side and are safe, the tips are protected by the wood base.
My kitchen knives are softer than a marshmallow.
I’m so clumsy, yet I’ve never cut my own skin with them.
It’s all about the slice. One of the best lessons I ever learned in the culinary field is being able to cut with a dull knife
Now I’m jealous of you. I wish I knew how to do that.
The best advice I can give without being present to demonstrate is to let the knife do the work and essentially just slide the edge of the blade across what you’re trying to cut while only allowing the weight of the blade itself to apply the downward force until the edge catches. You should never really apply much downward force to cut in general so that the knife can actually slice instead of essentially wedging what you’re cutting apart. The hardest part is getting the blade to catch at first so it might take some finesse to start a cut but other than that there isn’t much else to it. Obviously there is a point that a blade is essentially unusable if it is completely blunt but in most cases a dull knife can get the job done. One last trick, for tomatoes and other soft things with a tough skin, using the point of the knife to slightly puncture the skin first will give you a place for the dull edge to catch to start a slice.
Noted.
