I really appreciate the conversations we have had about kitchens, cookware, and knives. You’ve been immersed in European cooking almost from the beginning, and have followed and adapted the French perspective to your home cooking tastefully and seamlessly.
My interests and subsequent explorations follow the path of the typical doctoral student I counsel: start with the broadest and most general topic, and work down, searching for something new: the most exciting contribution a doctoral student can make.
Those student interests have often involved world trade and international marketing. The market penetration of Japanese and Chinese kitchen knives are good examples to discuss in graduate classes. My collaborator, Dr. H, is teaching international marketing in graduate classes right now, and we meet very regularly. Sometimes, we discuss world markets for kitchen knives and the strategies of the various competitors.
The issue that fascinates me the most, personally, is the great experiment by KAI to buy the American knife company Kershaw, and launch the new brand Shun with strong influence from our American designers. I find it an easy topic to get into because I had inadvertently been using a KAI product already for decades.
I don’t know how “professional” but I’ve been using a boring ole Dexter boning knife for such jobs. Gets meat off the bone. Maybe not for fowl, though. Pheasants, I just gut and dip in boiling water. Really don’t break them down.
I was asking Pilgrim about change. Those were her responses.
For you, the question is how you’ve changed, updated, and repurposed your knives over the years. I’ve found a need to both repurpose and upgrade my older butcher knife because i don’t need to cut much meat at home any more: the butcher does it for me.
I repurpose my Dexters by donating them to my school. I used to have a ton of Dexter boning knives from when my dad worked in a slaughterhouse (Patrick Cudahy). We have a beautiful meats lab where kids bring in their farm and hunting dispatches and process them.
I’ll turn a beat up ole Kiwi into a bread knife, or just utility knife. Amazon package openers, etc. I never throw away a knife.
I also have a Thai street cleaver that is primarily a pizza cutter now.
My “birthday” Shun Fuji Chef’s knife has me repurposing everything. It’s now the centerpiece of my magnetized cherry wood strip (behind me); my debas and cleavers (and my birchwood) are grabbably in front, and, next to the sink, with my four cutting boards, I’ve gathered my softer steel knives together with their own honing steel: they back up the other knives.
My Wusthof take-apart shears have been service-able for seven years, but I’m certain I could update and improve if I looked. I do use them frequently. Some have bought several, but I’m satisfied with what I have.
I loved the Dexter boning knives but rarely kept any at home. We had to turn them back to the storeroom in order to get a new one issued. Do you recall which department your father worked in?
The latest: The Kai Seki Magroku Kinju ST was given as a birthday present to a colleague who intends to use it in his home country to fillet large fish. I’ve already moved my Shun Kanso Utility knife to take one of the slots with the cleavers and birchwood.
Now, my only deba is my Xinzuo dual core–which will remain as a comparison knife.
My dad was mid management in charge of the smoke room. I remember touring with him and seeing the gutters of blood running everywhere. Then, grab a slice of pepperoni off the belt. If you’re gonna eat meat, have to kill something.
Sliced Bacon was a department I would deliberately walk through. It was near Smoked Meats and smelled so nice. Plus, Sliced Bacon had the attractive women too. Haha
Ever go to “hog awful”, where they separated the guts? Now those were fresh chitlins. Those gals were a little less refined than the bacon crowd.
The kicker was, back then beef was much cheaper than pork, so, for us to eat a ranch ham, it was Christmas and/or Easter. I got so sick of round steak, and ground beef, I would have killed for pork chops, or the beautiful pork roasts, with the thick fat cap. Damn good.
I still have one of those Dexters. Broken tip, though. You should see the kids at my school sharpening them, then processing the venison or turkey they just dropped. Fills my heart.
I’ve repurposed an old SS cleaver into a kindling wood splitter. Gets more love now than it did in my drawer.
I got laid off one summer and worked the kill “separating”. I don’t know how I got that job as it’s usually higher seniority. Just remove the stomach, bladder from the liver, and then drop them down a shoot and the intensities went down a different shoot.
I didn’t do it long and put onto that “splitting” saw cutting down the spine. More physical and more money.
(Occasionally on the separting table when I came across a full stomach I’d score it a few times then drop it down the shoot. It fell straight down 1 story to another table and splatter like a water balloon. Ohhhhh those people down there didn’t have much of a sense of humor.)
Reminds me of a time when the Sir Lawrence that I have was a foundational, much used knife.
Here in SOCAL, the processing has gone far beyond what has been done at the slaughterhouse, and is done for us by the grocery store meat department. Sounds like it’s much the same for you
except
there is still access to fresh game outside the slaughterhouse where you live.
Not here.
One consequence in SOCAL may be that we eat a lot less meat–especially big hunks.
That may not be due to marketing strategies of supermarkets, but rather the changing cultural world we live in that emphasizes the importance of a balanced diet.
In any case, my butcher knife has come back out of retirement to slice English muffins for breakfast most mornings.
Those people down there. That was hog awful. My brother worked on the docks for years. Then he went to school and got the hail out.
Ever eat a Hamdinger? They gave those away. I get squeemy just thinking about them. “Hamdingers, hamdingers; hamburgers made with ham. Hamdingers! Just heat ‘em up in a frying’ pan!” OMG possibly the worst food I’ve ever consumed.
Loved their thuringer, though. Did you ever get one of those little jack knives that said PC on them, that were made for the purpose of testing sausages? I know i still have one somewhere.
We always used to go to where they stacked the manure. You find some older manure, and it’s crawling with red worms. Those are some of the best fishing worms you can get. One shovel full into a 5 gallon bucket and you’re set for awhile.
