heavy duty knife

I need a knife that is for chopping chocolate, nuts of all kinds, and other heavy duty tasks. Would a deba be the best thing or just some cheap chef's knife like a Forschner? What would everyone recommend.

hmmm how about a bone chopping cleaver.

cleaver

I would prefer long chefs knife like 12" Forschner than cleaver.

Beatty Cleaver #0 would do well.
I keep looking for the bigger sizes for Chef Niloc's collection. If I ever find one I will give him an immediate heads up on it.

I'm split between recommending something cheap like the Forschner and a cleaver. The cleaver has the weight to get through the blocks of chocolate but the cheaper knife has the ability to easily turn into a plating spatula for cakes and whatnot.

When ever a multilayered cake comes back to me I use a sujihiki. Perhaps I just need to drop the $30 for a cake knife but I never think about it.

well for me cheap knife.

deba is for fish and yes can do rough tasks but tend to be fish related and arent cheap.

if you planned for your deba to do all rough tasks is not the same knife im thinking of which i think of being for fish. a western deba could easily be the knife you want but it will be very heavy imo id get a aritsugu a type and not overly thin it.

Buy as nice a knife as you can afford to feel ok beating up. Yes, chocolate is hard. Yes, nuts are hard. Compared to steel? It's closer to butter.

Well I have knives I just don't want to put an aeb-l or vg10 blade through chocolate, nuts, and frozen desserts. I am thinking maybe something like a cheap chroma chef knife or some big german full tang sling blade.

Eh, anything that isn't thinned out will do fine as long as you are careful not to do any twisting action. Otherwise, go with a cleaver.

I will look into a cleaver. I am assuming a #0 is the one for this?

Tojiro 240 yo deba is what i use for this.

pumbaa said:

I will look into a cleaver. I am assuming a #0 is the one for this?

Click to expand...

Andy777, or Hax are cleaver guys. They are the ones for definitive advice. I think a Beatty #0 along along with many other styles would probably work. I just like that one because it is heavy vs a light thin vegetable style. But like Bill said nuts and chocolate are butter compared to steel. Theory saying deba is bound to be good advice. He is a knife wizard. If you havent seen his videos you should.I recently got a crab deba and wouldn't hesitate chopping nuts or chocolate.

Deckhand said:

Andy777, or Hax are cleaver guys. They are the ones for definitive advice. I think a Beatty #0 along along with many other styles would probably work. I just like that one because it is heavy vs a light thin vegetable style. But like Bill said nuts and chocolate are butter compared to steel. Theory saying deba is bound to be good advice. He is a knife wizard. If you havent seen his videos you should.I recently got a crab deba and wouldn't hesitate chopping nuts or chocolate.

Click to expand...

What he said. +1 on deba +1 on andy777

Deckhand said:

But like Bill said nuts and chocolate are butter compared to steel.

Click to expand...

Different Burke!




But seriously, pumbaa, what kind of nuts are you cutting? How frozen is the stuff you are cutting? You are certainly not alone in this fear! Not to stop you from furthering your addiction (*ahem* education) by buying sweet new toys, but I haven't slept all night and have work in half an hour, so I've got nothing else to do, and I want to address these concerns right quick. Imma let you finish.

I have cut up blocks of chocolate with everything from a CCK1303 to a Rader custom. All of them do fine.

Nuts? I've yet to come across a nut that is as hard as chocolate, and chocolate, as I've said, does fine. I don't chop walnut shells with it or anything, but that's because it'd be messy, not that it would hurt the knife(plus I don't eat them, lol).

Frozen goods...well, if it's still a frozen solid block, it is far more likely that in the process of cutting it, a weak line in the ice will crack and split whichever way it goes. So it doesn't matter what you are using, if I try to pry a crate of chicken breasts apart straight from the freezer, they will split through the middle as easily as they will apart, because it's more like cracking a brick. If it's thawed at all, to the point where the ice is flaky, you can, again, cut it with pretty much any knife.

The reason that people's cheapo beaters get so much unannounced attachment from their owners is because they are ok with abusing them. This is why owners of Cold Steel knives swear by them--they see the guys who make them abusing them like teenagers and trust that they will do the same for them, and in the course of their non-thriller-movie life, it handles cutting up packages, food, roots, and rope just fine.


I remember the first time I was cutting a fish with my Tojiro dp gyuto(my first good knife) and was pissed at my boss and working kinda fast--I wasn't thinking about my knife, only the fish, and ended up bending the blade a LOT--it was flexed like a fillet knife, and if you'd asked me a month before, I would never have done that for fear it would break. But after that, I liked using it even more, because I trusted it's strength. IMO, the thing that creates the "feels like an extension of your body" feeling is not balance, comfort, or size; it is the trust that the thing won't break and you can trust it's limits---yes, it'll chip the edge if you use it to scrape the grill grate, and it is possible to hammer it into a frozen block and twist, and crack something in the process. But if you are just cutting food and not treating it like a prybar, hammer, or sword, you will be fine.

Spend the 120$ at Bed Bath & Beyond and get a 10inch henckel chef. That has enough weight behind it. The steel is soft enough to come back after steeling it. And you won't be super pissed if someone else loses or uses it. A very forgiving blade, the king of the beaters-I can open cans with it. They send like 1000 of their 20% off coupon in the mail every month.

Eamon is spot on about chocolate, nuts and frozen stuff.

If you have a spare gyuto you want to use just for these jobs, then just sharpen it at 25 degrees to make the edge capable of taking some abuse without shipping.

If you have to have a heavy knife, and you're going to spend the cash, then this is one of the better ones, made for the job:

Victorinox Forschner Rosewood Extra Heavy Bone Splitter
http://www.cutleryandmore.com/victorinox-forschner-rosewood/extra-heavy-bone-splitter-p13588



Rick

I like my Henkels cleaver for chocolate. Or my Lamson. Definitely the Lamson for anything frozen.

-AJ

ThEoRy said:

Tojiro 240 yo deba is what i use for this.

Click to expand...

This western deba has almost the profile of a gyuto.. a tad larger but thicker..

One of the Wuesthof chefs knife Cooks knife wide version is also interesting as it is abt 50mm high as compared to 45mm regular chefs knife adn alot thinker...almost double in thickness. I have yet to check it out.

Both are definitely intended for heavy duty tasks...

rgds

I used a Forschner to chop up chocolate on Sat. and it handled it with no problem. The Forschner does pretty much everything with no problem. If it had better edge retention, it'd be my main knife.

Bill I will be cutting up 5 kilo blocks of 8/11 calebaut. I will also be cutting semi frado into portions, and pistachios and peanuts as far as nuts go. I have a henckles 5 star chef knife I have had for years I think I will just abuse it. I really want a new knife as a present to myself for the new job.

I'm not the most carefull guy in the world but when it comes to cutting blocks of chocolate I want height and leverage. It's one of those chores you can envision lobbing off a finger.

Salty dog said:

I'm not the most carefull guy in the world but when it comes to cutting blocks of chocolate I want height and leverage. It's one of those chores you can envision lobbing off a finger.

Click to expand...

At minimum a fingernail.

A heavy bone chopping Cleaver is in order. I do not have a lot of experience cutting chocolate but for bones, crushing and chopping larger items like nuts the inexpensive ‘barbecue chopper’ from CCK works perfect. Btw, I prefer to use a sawing motion with a serrated knife on frozen items, if cutting into the product is imperative I employ my larger ice chisels to make a fracture.

Hax the Cook CLEAVERS RULE!!!

Of course there's also the bread knife and rolling pin method.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Ydx-2MDfg

[video=youtube;03Ydx-2MDfg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Ydx-2MDfg[/video]

For chocolate, I have found that a long, rigid, blade with a high heel works very well for the "paper cutter" motion. -The higher the heel and longer the blade, the better the leverage. My Rader custom works great.

For nuts: the flat, thin, but hefty blade of a cleaver works well to slice/dice without crushing /making dust& butter. I have had no problems using my DT AEB- L cleaver or CCK 1303.

Sounds like a job for a cck cleaver. No use losing a finger over some chocolate. I dont think you need the super heavy duty one for bbq.

IMO, a 1303 is not the ideal tool for a massive 5kg "super bar" of very hard chocolate for a few reasons:
-the tip is thin and sharp and the blade profile isnt designed to be used with the tip on the board and the heel far enough in the air to clear the chocolate moumtain.

- the stubby handle is designed for pinch or "peace sign" grips and the spine is thin and sharp. This doesnt make for long term comfort when doing hard/power cuts.

-if you just "wack" vs controlled push, the chance of eventually burrying the heel or tip in the board and bending/breaking it is high.

-the CCK is actually on the more lasery end of the cleaver scale and you can feel it torque and wiggle under heavy load (not a good feeling). If I had to use a cleaver for this type of chocolate mining, it would be one with a longer, more robust blade and a larger handle, more like a large Takeda or Curtis's custom Carter, or that custom Harner that was on BST.

Nothing over $50. An eight inch Forschner chef's knife works well on the ~1kg blocks I get.