Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Knife must haves?

I butterfly chickens with 'em, in prep for cooking 1/2's on the smoker.






But they're not "dedicated" kitchen shears...

FC

I use a set of SS anvil shears for cutting ribs when butchering a deer carcass..I have a couple of proper butchers bone saws, but for our small Roe and Muntjac, the shears are quicker and do the job just fine..

Our chickens are about 2X that size - big bastids!

I've split them a few times, but just use a knife. Guess I'm just a Neanderthal!

We cooked some deer ribs at a cabin last year on Kodiak, but usually they are stripped clean and go in the burger bag.


thanks for the answers guys!

My time living in Korea I learned to use shears for about everything, They are the kitchen tool of choice over there.

My wife bought a pair of shears at a Pampered Chef party a couple years ago. At first I thought they were a gimmick, but must admit I use them all the time when prepping chickens as described above. Great tool.



Mike

We use shears to splay chickens as posted, cutting chives - fresh herbs, cutting up the length of the shell on crab legs and other seafood, cutting cooking string/wire, as well as, just having a simple kitchen utility tool handy.

Beats the tin snips I use to use!

I've got a nice pair of Henckel shears, but don't really use them for much except cutting paper, twine and such, or trimming back tomato plants.

chef's scissors are very useful in the kitchen. I use them for a lot of things, such as chopping fresh herbs, cutting meat, and trimming chicken.

Gerber Game Shears

These shears from Gerber are hard to beat. I like them because they've got a 'bone notch' which works good for cutting wings and tails off of pheasants. Keep them in my bird hunting box, but they work just as well in the kitchen. The blades come apart for easy cleaning as well.

A big +1 on the Gerber game shears. Bought a pair about 7 years ago for a pheasant hunt. Have used yearly since then in South Dakota where we've been fortunate enough to go through up to 24 birds daily for a week's hunt. Use them year 'round, mostly for splitting chicken wings; but they have much greater use factor than I've tried. And as already posted they come apart easily and are easy to keep clean.

Lookin' like I should learn something here.

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Teal...

I totally agree with your well-thought-out four choices in the TYPE of knives you absolutely need.

Of all of my set of 4-star Henckel knives (which I strongly recommend to you) the most used is definitely my 8-inch chef's knife. I have a 10-inch chefs as well, but it's rarely used except for chopping salad stuff. The 8-inch chefs is better balanced when held correctly and thus used a LOT more than the 10-inch chef's knife for a multitude of duties.

That said, let me list the most-used knives in numerical (most used) order:

1) 8-inch chef's knife
2) 4-inch paring knife
3) (tie) 8-inch bread knife (I love home-made breads & make 'em a lot)
3) (tie) 7-inch utility knife (used for general carving/cutting plus for carving holiday turkeys)
5) 10-inch chef's knife (only used to chop veggies for salads and not often used)
6) 9-inch carving knife (used twice a year on Thanksgiving & Christmas turkeys)
7) 5.5 inch boning knife (rarely EVER used. I let the butcher do that)
8) Henckel Cleaver (never used, I don't even know where it is. Again, I let the butcher do the chopping)

For "cooking Chinese", I have & use an 8-inch Martin Yan cleaver which substitutes for 'most all knives fairly well... plus it works fine as a dough scrapper as well to scoop-up finely chopped ingredients. Of course, one must not become too "forceful" when scooping-up ingredients while "blocking" the ingredients with one's other hand since this cleaver is extremely sharp and holds it's "edge" quite well.

Welcome to the Cook's Club...


Strength & Honor...

Ron T.

^ ahem.. ^

Globals are a decent Jap offering, not a fan of the handles.

Course they don't measure up to Henckels, Calphalon, or Wusthof.... *snickers*

A lot of these threads just end up being name dropping exercises.. Chopping up onions for hamburger helper or some, wow, salsa - "hey, look at my knives.."

I should post a vid of me using my 10" trident chef, one I've had since working behind the line, doing what it does best - punching holes in the tops of #10 cans.

Good point.

I'm a bit different i guess, i prefer the japanese blade styles- I find that a 9-10" santoku blade beats a chefs knife every time for overall utility and the sujihiki makes a great slicer.

for most 'American' style cooking, Japanese blade shapes do not work well. Santuko is the most useless of them all. There are reasons different cultures, eating different foods, with different prep methods, settled on certain blade shapes and styles.

20 years of using them-so far they haven't proven to be to useless.
Curious how it is you find they don't work well? I've always found the slight curvature to the belly of the blade to be perfect for dicing, chopping..basic prep work which is what a santoku is designed for, general utility.