Anyone use an American-style butcher knife as their main blade?

R

RI Swamp Yankee

Joined
Jul 31, 2013
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25
OK, I've been using German-style chef's knives as my main cooking knife most of my adult life. I'm intrigued by the Old Hickory butcher knives, tho... they seem to represent a fifth main chef's knife style: German chef, French chef/Japanese gyuto, Japanese santoku, Chinese cleaver, and now American Butcher. From the wikipedia article, they were apparently made to be sold as a general purpose cooking knife to frontiersmen and their families, rather than a butchery tool.

Does anyone here use one that way? How do they hold up while chopping onions, slicing tomatoes, dicing carrots, mincing garlic and chiffonading mint(the stuff I do with my 8" German style knife)? Are they unforgivably clumsy, or a forgotten American culinary tradition that can hold its own when given a chance?
 
I can't see a butcher knife being good for general kitchen stuff. These knives were designed for a particular task (butchering animals), even though they were often used for other things. I can open a box with a german chef's knife, but that doesn't make it right for the job. The design of a butcher knife isn't particularly well-suited for the tasks you list. It doesn't have enough clearance, blades are often going to be too thick, and the blade geometry is going to promote wedging. This is a blade designed to separate joints, not chiffonade mint.
For comparison, people many thousands of years ago used small chips of flint to do all of their food prep. This was what they had and so they used it. We now have much better options that are much more suited to the task.

- Chris
 
I can't see it...I use a laser gyuto for 95% of prep work involving something larger than a paring knife despite owning multiple knife types. A 270mm gyuto is, IMHO, the best multi-tasker in the kitchen. I use it for everything from cutting almonds to slicing tomatoes or bread to prepping meat, to mincing the herbs I often cook with. I think a major reason they have seen an explosion in popularity is because of how many different things they can do and how they can handle both finesse cutting in which bruising/mushing is easy to do to heavier chopping/rocking/mincing...also, given how light the 270 is, it is much easier to do precision cutting than a thick 9 inch chef's knife in which control is harder to maintain, IMHO.
 
My Dad was a butcher (that's butcher, not meat cutter). As a result I have 6-7 of his Old Hickory knives in various shapes and sizes, most of them now over 60 years old. I also have a dozen Japanese knives of various shapes and sizes, from gyuto to honesuki. About the only time I reach for an Old Hickory is when I'm feeling nostalgic and have a chicken to dismember. As Hesparus mentioned, they are just not designed as a kitchen knife.
 
In my experience, you can use any knife as long as your accustomed to that knife.

I use a 270mm slicer for EVERYTHING. Of course I have other knives more suitable for the task but I can certainly pull it off since ive used to these style of knife fpr almost a decade.
 
I don't think anyone implied that they COULDN'T use butcher knives in the kitchen....but why, when there are so many better knives for the job? To each his own, but using a 270 to peel a potato when a perfectly good paring knife is an arm length away is just silly. Especially for us home cooks. If you are in a job where you are so pressed for time that you can't take 10 seconds to grab a more suitable knife....I feel for you. ;-)
 
Main blade, no, my old hickory bull nose is pretty thick. It can do any job,but there are better knives for most tasks.

They do make for pretty good camping knife and I keep mine in my block because it was my Grandfathers.
 
Its not that im lazy. I can do what any of you can do with a 270mm. Ive just been using it for years upon years, i am comfortable with it.

I have 2 pairing knives and theyve been used once, by my GF.

Why reach for another knife when mine will do? Wasted time
 
Personally I'm not even a fan of the straight bull-nosed knives for butchering work, they are clumsy and I like more belly. Like everyone else has said they could be used for a lot of tasks but really excel at none in my opinion. I am a fan of cimitar butcher knives as you can see in my avatar. They are the knives I use all day everyday for work. With that said though they are meat cutting knives and that alone, they are specialized knives. I still have a french chefs knife and Santuko at my kitchen at home despite my butche knives being the most comfortable in my hand.
Best regards
 
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