Some time again at my favourite kitchen-gear commerce present, I noticed what seemed to be a trending class: barbecue knives. Their distinguishing traits appear to be a reasonably tall blade, a form that encourages a wokka-wokka–type rocking movement, and a target market that skews closely towards dudes with beards. Not all of these traits scream “nice for grilling,” however I used to be intrigued.
One query instantly caught in my head: What, if something, makes a knife grill-friendly? These I might come throughout actually had a glance that blended pirate cutlasses and samurai swords, together with Japanese kitchen knives and infrequently Chinese language cleavers. Advertisements with Man Fieri look-alikes who had been “blown away” by this “radical design” shortly started crufting up my social media feeds.
I despatched a observe off to my trusted knife man, Bob Tate, at Bozeman Knife Sharpening & Provide to get his tackle barbecue knives. He had simply sharpened one for a shopper and located that it “appeared like a cross between one thing Attila the Hun would use in battle and a zombie slayer.” This one specifically struck him because the product of superstar cooks and knife designers who wanted to justify their existences.
He clearly could not see the purpose, preferring to steer prospects contemplating a set towards the well-known trifecta of a chef’s knife, paring knife, and bread knife.
“I inform them they will have the ability to do 90 p.c of every little thing they should do and be method happier doing it ’trigger they’ve received a superior product,” Tate says.
Courtesy of Messermeister
Charmed Knife
Although I did not scent a rat, one thing felt just a bit bit made up about this knife type, so I referred to as a few them in for testing. First to reach was the eight-inch Messermeister Avanta Kendrick BBQ Knife, with a swashbuckler vibe, a curved backbone (the highest of the blade), a deal with that continued that arc upward, and the edges of the blade painted black. (Should you want much more macho than all that, try the video.)
The knife is a bit blade-heavy, a mode that isn’t my jam, however it felt good to wield. Messermeister is a well-respected model amongst each professional cooks and residential cooks. Chad Ward, writer of An Edge In The Kitchen, calls certainly one of Messermeister’s conventional nine-inch chef’s knives “nearly excellent.” This led to a little bit of confusion as I received chopping, when my response began at “what the?” and proceeded to “ouch!”
A couple of issues turned clear as I chopped my method by piles of onions, carrots, herbs, and meat. First, the upward deal with angle had peculiar results on the knife’s habits. Think about the grip you’d use on a “common” knife, which is vaguely like shaking somebody’s hand. Now watch what your hand must do to accommodate an upward deal with angle. It will get awkward sort of shortly, proper?