Comprehensivist
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2008
- Messages
- 3,150
My first awareness of Carothers knives came in early 2016 when I clicked on one of Nathan’s ads for the “Kitchen Utility Vegetable Knife” which is more commonly referred to now as the Potato Annihilator or Potato Knife. I was interested because my favorite, and most used, kitchen knives fall in the the 6” to 6-1/2” size range. Of course the knives were already sold out by the time I saw the ad. I watched for another opportunity to buy one, but that wasn’t meant to be back then.
Fast forward to last week when I found one posted in the BS&T thread here. I decided to buy it as a gift for my wife to bridge the size gap between her large and small kitchen knives. She was a happy camper when it arrived. She likes the weight and neutral balance point right on the furrule. She also picked-up on the fact that this is a right-handed knife based on the grind.
While all the kitchen knives we have are “ours”, we each have distinct subsets we gravitate to.
Here is the Potato knife along with a Ken Onion 8” Chef Knife and Bark River Petty that now form her favorite trio.
Here it is again with my preferred trio for comparison. Of note, the Robert Erickson knife in .070” AEB-L has shown me what a great steel this is for a kitchen knife after almost five years of daily use.
Since photos and comments on this model are somewhat few and far between, I thought it would be nice to add some info here now that we have one in hand.
Thanks to @AR-Trvlr ‘s extremely helpful CPK Encyclopedia thread, I was able to quickly research the history of this model. There were a total of 57 knives sold in thirteen ad threads between September 2015 thru August 2016. There were certainly others that Nathan & Jo sold at Blade or other places. Whatever the final number was, it was relatively low compared to current production runs.
I believe that the lineage of our knife can be traced to the final sale thread on 08/06/16 because this group of five knives was ground on both blade flats instead of having the orange peel mill finish on the right side that characterized prior lots.
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/five-6-kitchen-utility-vegetable-knives.1418753/
An hour after the knife arrived, I was already putting it use. Iceburg and other lettuces have been in short supply in my area since the Covid-19 fallout. Cabbage, in contrast, has been plentiful everywhere. I decided to play the available cards so to speak and make a batch of my favorite peanut cole slaw recipe. The Potato Knife performed admirably thin slicing red & green cabbage, green onions, and celery as the main ingredients.
The Potato Knife did just fine chopping up the namesake cocktail peanuts too. I switched cutting boards for this ingredient to minimize the tendency of harder foods to go flying when you split them.
Adding the final spices and oil & vinegar dressing before stirring it up and there you have it. A classic recipe from a historic L.A. area restaurant.
Fast forward to last week when I found one posted in the BS&T thread here. I decided to buy it as a gift for my wife to bridge the size gap between her large and small kitchen knives. She was a happy camper when it arrived. She likes the weight and neutral balance point right on the furrule. She also picked-up on the fact that this is a right-handed knife based on the grind.
While all the kitchen knives we have are “ours”, we each have distinct subsets we gravitate to.
Here is the Potato knife along with a Ken Onion 8” Chef Knife and Bark River Petty that now form her favorite trio.
Here it is again with my preferred trio for comparison. Of note, the Robert Erickson knife in .070” AEB-L has shown me what a great steel this is for a kitchen knife after almost five years of daily use.
Since photos and comments on this model are somewhat few and far between, I thought it would be nice to add some info here now that we have one in hand.
Thanks to @AR-Trvlr ‘s extremely helpful CPK Encyclopedia thread, I was able to quickly research the history of this model. There were a total of 57 knives sold in thirteen ad threads between September 2015 thru August 2016. There were certainly others that Nathan & Jo sold at Blade or other places. Whatever the final number was, it was relatively low compared to current production runs.
I believe that the lineage of our knife can be traced to the final sale thread on 08/06/16 because this group of five knives was ground on both blade flats instead of having the orange peel mill finish on the right side that characterized prior lots.
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/five-6-kitchen-utility-vegetable-knives.1418753/
An hour after the knife arrived, I was already putting it use. Iceburg and other lettuces have been in short supply in my area since the Covid-19 fallout. Cabbage, in contrast, has been plentiful everywhere. I decided to play the available cards so to speak and make a batch of my favorite peanut cole slaw recipe. The Potato Knife performed admirably thin slicing red & green cabbage, green onions, and celery as the main ingredients.
The Potato Knife did just fine chopping up the namesake cocktail peanuts too. I switched cutting boards for this ingredient to minimize the tendency of harder foods to go flying when you split them.
Adding the final spices and oil & vinegar dressing before stirring it up and there you have it. A classic recipe from a historic L.A. area restaurant.
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at $170 
Back then, proxying was not a thing!