Cutting meat is not always limited to the use of conventional kitchen or hunting knives. If we are talking about large pieces of beef, pork, lamb carcass weighing a dozen or more kilograms or you need to cut up a chicken or large fish like catfish or carp, a chopping knife for cutting is the ideal choice.
Purpose and performance
Knife-ax is the younger brother of an ordinary ax. Its structure is such that the blade has a shape that is vaguely similar to a real ax. It is given forward in the form of a square rounded at the edges, which allows you to wield such a product without intensive chopping movements with your hand. Unlike the usual ax, the butt is thickened, but does not copy the form of a clumsy one. It is an indispensable tool for butchering layers of meat, in which small and medium-sized bones are found, and chopping frozen fillets.
This is an indispensable tool for meat packers in the kitchen of a hypermarket or a large cafe, the menu of which includes an abundance of meat and fish dishes.
Knife-hatchet is suitable for chopping meat and bones, butchering meat is "on the joints." It has a wide and heavy blade, which makes it possible not to shred meat, like sausage, but to cut it in a structured and well-defined manner, preserving the fibers that hold their juices and liquids.
If you used the usual blade, which such work is not according to its capabilities, the cut meat would resemble squeezed lemon in consistency. Cutting the bones with a knife-hatchet does not imply the formation of bone krosheva during the cutting movements, which discourage people to have a dish made of meat, in which such fragments often occur.
Knife-hatchet facilitates the work of the woodcutter or cook when cutting a large number of animal or poultry carcasses. This allows you to increase the productivity of people for whom cutting meat - the main responsibility for enterprises that produce finished meat or fish products.
Additional features
The center of mass of the knife-ax is between the blade and the handle, and not somewhere inside it, or in the middle of the blade. This allows you to achieve the maximum cutting (chopping) effect.
A good sign can be a special ring for hanging the knife on the hook - this is how you can place the entire arsenal of knives used for cooking in a narrow and confined space.
The chopper knife is often an U-shaped tip, but with “square” turning edges on one side, or a heavy and short blade whose length approaches its width. It can be strictly square in shape or in the form of a short rectangle, the front and lower cutting sides are located side by side, and the pointed angle allows piercing difficult-to-cut ligaments, bones and cartilage.
Examples of hatchets
It is important to buy a quality knife-ax - experienced cutters and chefs recommend, for example, the following products.
- Japanese Samura Golf Nakiri with a blade length of 167 mm. The total length of the knife is 305 mm. Product weight - 103 g. Made of AUS-8 steel with a hardness factor of 58 units on the Roxwell scale.
- Swiss Victorinox 5.4063.18 - made from rolled molybdenum-vanadium steel with a hardness of 56 units, blade length - 216 mm, knife weight - 310 g
- Chinese Mr. Blade camp - AUS-8 steel with a hardness of 58 units, the length of the working part - 184 mm. Thanks to the powerful handle such knife weighs 663 g.
As customer experience shows, the best knife products (not necessarily choppers) are made by Japan, Switzerland, England and Brazil.
How to choose a knife ax?
In the basis of the correct choice of knives, hatchets are several important parameters.
- The blade should be wide and thickened.. The optimal balance between weight and force applied to chopping is the main criterion when choosing a knife with the most effective and convenient blade. The length of the blade is usually 15-25 cm, but the width must be at least 8 cm, otherwise it is no longer a cleaver, but an ordinary kitchen knife.
- Short handle with a rounded transverse shape, having hollows for the fingers to hold the whole structure. This allows you to achieve the most reliable coverage, significantly reducing hand fatigue during work.
- Double-sided sharpening. One-sided will lead the edge sideways, making cutting products will require much more effort. Sharpening a blunted blade on both sides is easier - you still sharpen the knife is not one-sided, but in two ways. The angle of grinding should not necessarily go beyond 15-45 degrees: the larger one prevents cutting the meat, the smaller one makes the knife unusually thin, like a razor blade.
- Steel quality - Must be stainless, not carbon. The latter is covered with brown scurf, when the knife is not immediately washed, it quickly becomes thinner, it becomes harder and harder to make it sharp again when blunting from frequently occurring bones, and the food is irony. Rusting products are cheap, but do not save on the price. Damascus steel or titanium is strong enough, the first requires special care, the second, on the contrary, is unpretentious to use and significantly lighter.
- The best choice would be the metal handle, not wooden or plastic. The metal will not burn or melt from high temperatures, for example, when a knife is accidentally thrown dangerously close to fire. Completely steel product is easy to wash, it does not retain extraneous odors. The one-piece knife does not need rivets and bolts. Disadvantages - a decent weight (more than a kilogram) and a high price.
- Finally, before buying a knife-hatchet, check it for workmanship: no wear (numerous scuffs and scratches, indicating that the tool was used for a very long time and has been eroded several times), chips, gouges, and cuts. The latter report that the knife was not used at all for its intended purpose, for example, by hitting a hammer on its butt against a piece of wood.
An overview of the chopping hatchet Mr. Blade Camp is waiting for you further.
