Blade Love

Americans spend over 700 million dollars a year on kitchen knives. With statistics like that, you’d think that every man, woman, and child in the land of the free are experienced masters of culinary cutlery.

Children should be butchering cattle by age five, and teenagers should be experts at the knife game featured in Aliens.

How can we spend so much on cutlery? We haven’t disrupted the restaurant industry with our blade love.

The National Restaurant Association reports the projected sales of US restaurants in 2019 totals 863 billion dollars.

Knife blocks are a common feature of the American kitchen. They display your fancy steel, and they prevent your blades from getting scratched up in a drawer. I should know; I have two of them.

Yes, it seems excessive to have over twenty kitchen knives, but I have an excuse. I’m homeschooling a large group of butcher apprentices, and as you know, I need tons of cutlery for training. Actually, the truth is less entertaining or insane.

After purchasing an inexpensive knife block, I inherited a block of 1982 Chicago Cutlery (when the company’s product was manufactured in Wauconda, Illinois rather than China), and I frequently use the bread knife and chef’s knife.

Alfred Paulson founded Chicago Cutlery in 1930 as a knife-conditioning and sharpening operation. With a steady supply of butchers and commercial retailers, he expanded his business to include knife manufacturing.

Before the company’s takeover in 1988, the knives were crafted by hand. The handles were made from American trees, and the blades were made with U.S. Steel.

Mine has held up well for being 38 years old, and I recommend buying a used set if you can verify the knives’ production date.

Although I have enough steel to declare war on Vermont, I realized that I rarely use most of it. I have three sets of steak knives. As Marlon Brando said, “The horror …. The horror!”

Unless I begin serving well-done beef to dozens of dinner guests each week, I don’t need steak knives. At the restaurant and in the kitchen, I seldom use more than three types of cutlery.

It Takes Three

There are countless myths and clichés concerning the number three, but sometimes, I buy into the idea that good things come in threes.

Except for The Godfather Part III, Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars (at least there were two sets of excellent trilogies), the second and third Matrix films, and the last two Hangover movies, I like trilogies.

I respect the holy trinity of Cajun cooking, which includes onions, celery, and bell peppers. I admire the inept three branches of our government, I’m thrilled by documents that require three signatures, and when I had hair, I excelled at lather, rinse, and repeat.

The same goofy nonsense (my sarcastic analysis of the lucky number) applies to cutlery. All you need in your kitchen is three knives: a chef’s knife, a serrated knife, and a paring knife.

Many of you may also use a carving knife and a cleaver. A well-made chef’s knife can accomplish many of the same tasks unless you need a cleaver for your daily butchering of large animals.

A long-bladed carving knife is handy, but how often do you slice a whole turkey, ham, roast beef, or pig?

If you answered, “very often,” you could use an 8-10-inch chef’s blade. A chef’s knife or butcher knife is the most useful tool in your kitchen. Unless you’re cutting baked bread, a chef’s knife will slice, chop, or slaughter all your meat and produce.

I use a paring knife for peeling apples, slicing peppers and grape tomatoes, and cutting cheese. You can use a chef’s blade for the same jobs, but a sharp paring knife is safer and more comfortable on Los Manos.

Did you sit on my Bread, Chief?

A sharp serrated knife that has points similar to those on a tree saw is perfect for cutting bread. If your dime-store bread blade mashes rather than slices your Uncle’s famous beer bread, buy a better knife.

A lousy knife will make your slices of bread look like they were used as hemorrhoid pillows. The sat-upon look of your food will not impress the in-laws or escaped prisoners.

I understand that it may seem hypocritical only to promote using the holy trinity of steel when I own more knives than the average human, but I’m trying to change.

It’s difficult to sell or donate knives given to me as gifts, and I can’t part with inherited cutlery. I’ll admit it. I’m a sentimental maniac.