Serious Cooking Fanatics?

[WA Martin]

Well, It's been almost a week since I sent the 'Small Chef's Knife' back to John. Boy, did I hate to see that go back to John but rules are rules. I really enjoyed using the knife. I could very easily see it becoming part of my favorite knives line-up. When I got it from Bryan it was very sharp. Perfectly honed and ready to do business. When I put my name on the list I wasn't on a diet. I had visions of using this knife for all sorts of stuff that have sort of dried up and blown away over the last few months. Trying to limit my carb intake and with that goes sugar and flour and starchy vegetables and all sorts of things I was going to use this knife for. But all is not lost, I used it to cut up some stuff for a salad and then my wife and I decided to try making my mother's potato salad recipe with cauliflower (one of my approved vegetables) instead of potatoes (definitely on the "no" list, at least for now.) So I'll show what pictures I have and talk a little more about what struck my fancy.

 

[WA Martin]

View attachment 464034

(I don't know what the Cauliflower picture attached in the last post but oh, well.)

I started the morning by cutting up a boiled egg that needed to be eaten. The chef's knife did ok with that but in my experience boiled egg sticks to any blade so no surprises, and no picture, there. At lunch time I moved on to my salad and sliced up some mushroom - although not the thinest knife in the drawer it did just fine. Cut all the way through the skin on the bottom without having to carve out a piece of my cutting board. The tomatoes were no problem either. I tended to cut them by pushing forward on the knife until it bit into the skin of the tomato and then pulling it back through if I didn't slice completely through on the first stroke. Didn't smash the tomato to pulp. Didn't take a lot of effort to get it to bite either (probably the excellent edge it came with from Bryan). Then I diced some Tillamook cheddar cheese and finally, my father-in-law had given us a cucumber so I had to use it - right? Hopefully there's more fiber than carbs in cucumber so it didn't count against me too heavily. About the time I finished my salad my wife asked me to clean the cauliflower so that she could steam it and turn it into our "Cauliflower Salad". (Almost like what Mom used to make!)

This is where the Chef's Knife really shown. Plenty of heft to push through near the stalk to cut off some of the leaves, plenty of control to use the point of the knife to excise some more. Plenty of leverage to cut off part of the stalk when you had trimmed off the green leaves. And, finally I really enjoyed being able to sink the heel of the blade in close to the stalk to try to get those last few stubborn leaves to go. The knife is thick enough that you can give the blade a twist and pop the remaining part of the leaf away from the core. Once I had it to where I wanted it then I started slicing through the raw cauliflower in about inch thick slices. I then diced these up further to get about inch cubed pieces. Everything worked really great. When I get some bills paid off and some other stuff in order this is definitely a knife I will be asking John to make me. I really like it that much. Add it to my Koster Santoku, my Old Hickory butcher knife, and a parer and chef's knife handled by VCM3 and I should be good to go. (As long as I keep my wife and the kids from putting them where I can't find them…)

I also cut up some previously cooked roast beef and bratwurst and I think some chicken too. No problems what-so-ever. Oh, forgot about that onion - no pictures of the onion slices but you can see on the cucumber how thin I was able to make some of the slices. Paper thin in fact. Really nice slicer and when it came to dicing up the onion it was one of the best knives I've used. Plenty of belly on the knife and angled just right so that I wasn't mashing my knuckles into the cutting board while trying to dice the onion slices.

Thanks for the opportunity to borrow you knife for a while, John. I really appreciated it.

 

[mqqn]

Nice review Wade!

This one would be great in stainless!

best

mqqn

 

[Mack]

Great pics. I too really miss that knife. It does veggies really well and promotes healthy eating.

Mr Mqqn. I was thinking exactly the same thing about stainless. It would be perfect.

 

[cbwoods67]

Great review, Wade!

I am extremely glad I picked up one of these knives.

 

[jds1]

Very nice review! I'm loving mine too.

Jeff

 

[JK Knives]

It would take a lot of confirmed orders (with deposits) for me to even consider stainless as an option on these. I would need to buy a 6" x 36" piece of steel (it jumps from 1 1/2" wide to 6" wide), and that`s well over $200 for the steel!