Gravy's Cooking Thread
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Short answer: because it's a vegetable cleaver.
Long answer: the chinese use cleavers as a general chef's knife. Because of the blade height you can get them paper thin behind the edge, so they glide through just about anything when combined with the weight. They're actually really handy for vegetable prep once you get used to the height, you can mow through stuff then use the flat of the blade almost like a dough scraper to move it to a pan. I personally still prefer a good 240mm gyuto, but the cleaver is fun to pull out if I have a ton to dice.
They're also cheap as hell, to get a good gyuto with that kind of thinness behind the edge is a lot more expensive.
Long answer: the chinese use cleavers as a general chef's knife. Because of the blade height you can get them paper thin behind the edge, so they glide through just about anything when combined with the weight. They're actually really handy for vegetable prep once you get used to the height, you can mow through stuff then use the flat of the blade almost like a dough scraper to move it to a pan. I personally still prefer a good 240mm gyuto, but the cleaver is fun to pull out if I have a ton to dice.
They're also cheap as hell, to get a good gyuto with that kind of thinness behind the edge is a lot more expensive.
Lanx
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this is a meat cleaver, used for chopping/whacking at bones, while it may look like a chinese chefs knife(chinese cleaver) it is 5x as heavy to give it some heft so you can hack at bones. You cannot hack bones with a chinese chefs knife, there is no heft it is actually as thin as most japanese knives.
between skrala's cck knife and the meat cleaver i linked, i usually just say 90% a meat cleaver is defined by the eyelet (hole) used to hang meat cleavers on a hook traditionally, also it has that hump upwards to give it heft. (more technically it also is softer metal, wider, thicker so when you whack bones it won't chip).
at home i usually first grab a gyuto over the chinese chef knife, out of familiarity.
Gravy
Bronze Squire
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I wouldn't mind being proficient with a vegetable cleaver. There was a dude on Guy's Grocery Games (Go ahead and slip me a neg, I deserve it for watching that trash) who was really damned skilled with a veg cleaver. Fast and tiny dicing. And just for specificity, he was Asian. That's racist.
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I'm not familiar with vegetable cleavers, this intrigues me... It does appear to be a Chinese technique, and looks pretty versatile, depending on your skill level.
Dyvim
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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Lanx
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If you ever watched cooking shows back in the day, when they actually cooked instead of the guy fieriri salon highlights backwards glasses bullshit, Yan of Yan can Cook pretty much the ambassador of the chinese chefs knife. (he also has a chinese chefs knife, it kinda sucks btw, with the factory edge, i don't think it's even sold anymore) here's a link of him slicing (no youtube)
http://bcove.me/8fi3inaq
he uses the push cut or down forward motion to cut. I've adopted the chen kinichi way(iron chef) where he places the index finger and middle finger on the side, which seems to give more control and you let the knife drop down more on the food to cut.
http://bcove.me/8fi3inaq
he uses the push cut or down forward motion to cut. I've adopted the chen kinichi way(iron chef) where he places the index finger and middle finger on the side, which seems to give more control and you let the knife drop down more on the food to cut.
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So here's a tasty thing I made that surprised me because it was yummy enough that my kids all had seconds. Wasn't so hard, used seasonal vegetables, and was actually good for you.
Had a huge chuck roast, trimmed it, cut it into pieces (like stewing beef). Got a pot hot. Hot like your mom, hot. Browned those beef cubes in a little oil in the hot pan. Took the beef out, fried a large onion and five big cloves of garlic, all finely diced. When they were tender, I poured in about 4 cups of beef stock, a bottle of beer, plenty of Worcestershire sauce, half can of tomato paste, paprika, about 3 tablespoons of sugar, rosemary, and salt and pepper. Returned the beef to the liquid and cooked it for about 2 hours.
Then, added 2 turnips, 2 parsnips, 5 large carrots, and cooked it for about 45 minutes. Then I took out some of the liquid, added flour, and thickened it into a stew instead of a soup. Added parsley when I served it, and some folks grated romano cheese on it. Served it with bread baked that afternoon.
I typed it all out so that some of you might try it. It was delicious, and perfect for the snowy day we had.
Had a huge chuck roast, trimmed it, cut it into pieces (like stewing beef). Got a pot hot. Hot like your mom, hot. Browned those beef cubes in a little oil in the hot pan. Took the beef out, fried a large onion and five big cloves of garlic, all finely diced. When they were tender, I poured in about 4 cups of beef stock, a bottle of beer, plenty of Worcestershire sauce, half can of tomato paste, paprika, about 3 tablespoons of sugar, rosemary, and salt and pepper. Returned the beef to the liquid and cooked it for about 2 hours.
Then, added 2 turnips, 2 parsnips, 5 large carrots, and cooked it for about 45 minutes. Then I took out some of the liquid, added flour, and thickened it into a stew instead of a soup. Added parsley when I served it, and some folks grated romano cheese on it. Served it with bread baked that afternoon.
I typed it all out so that some of you might try it. It was delicious, and perfect for the snowy day we had.
Joeboo
Molten Core Raider
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Made some greek chicken salad tonight and it is badass.
It's basically just a normal chicken salad recipe only you sub tzaziki sauce for the mayo, and use diced cucumber instead of celery. All the usual ingredients apply, onion, dill, garlic, lemon juice, etc.
So goddamn tasty.
It's basically just a normal chicken salad recipe only you sub tzaziki sauce for the mayo, and use diced cucumber instead of celery. All the usual ingredients apply, onion, dill, garlic, lemon juice, etc.
So goddamn tasty.
Lanx
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do you have other whetstones, or just in general? i recommend king
Amazon.com: Kotobuki King 250+1000/K-80 Combo: Knife Sharpeners: Kitchen Dining
250 to get rid of lots of metal/reshape the blade or for chips, 1k for the final edge.
if you want to go even higher than that you can go for naniwa, i like their 6k grit, it feels creamier, yea sounds weird, but in sharpening it doesn't (since you're creating a slurry).
but king for 6k is good too.
these are japanese whetstones so you gotta soak em for 30mins, then use.
for everyday kitchen use up to 1k is fine (will shave hair if you force it) 6k imo is unnecessary and impractical but "feels" nice.
Erronius
<WoW Guild Officer>
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Zombie survival meat cleaver.
My parents didn't store it well so it's got some discoloration/light rust that I need to take off one of these days. We only ever used it on knuckles or joints maybe when I was a kid(IIRC) but honestly we never actually needed it, and the only use I have for it would be home defense. When you pick it up and feel how heavy it is, you realize that you could probably take someone's arm off with this.
The other weird thing is that the bevel is not symmetrical. When you look down the edge, the angle on one side is greater than the other and it's most noticeable at the nose. It may not be how it was originally ground, or maybe it was, but I don't think anyone in the last 2 generations would have had the means to grind it like that. Also the thickness of the tang noticeably tapers to being about half the thickness of the blade when it gets to the back of the handle.
The only stamp says "BRIDDELL solid steel" on it.
I really, really need to make a Halloween costume around this, LOL
My parents didn't store it well so it's got some discoloration/light rust that I need to take off one of these days. We only ever used it on knuckles or joints maybe when I was a kid(IIRC) but honestly we never actually needed it, and the only use I have for it would be home defense. When you pick it up and feel how heavy it is, you realize that you could probably take someone's arm off with this.
The other weird thing is that the bevel is not symmetrical. When you look down the edge, the angle on one side is greater than the other and it's most noticeable at the nose. It may not be how it was originally ground, or maybe it was, but I don't think anyone in the last 2 generations would have had the means to grind it like that. Also the thickness of the tang noticeably tapers to being about half the thickness of the blade when it gets to the back of the handle.
The only stamp says "BRIDDELL solid steel" on it.
I really, really need to make a Halloween costume around this, LOL