Ryan McKern

Pick­ing up where the pre­vi­ous article left off, here is part III of the series, titled "… past murals depict­ing Mediter­ranean scenes, towards the rotat­ing knives.". Not into remem­ber­ing where you've been and what you've done before? I've got it cov­ered. Parts I through IV are as follows:

• Cut­lery Primer: "I see you've played knifey spooney before…"
  Or, A sharp knife cuts faster and cleaner while using less force.
• Cut­lery Primer: "These are knives! He wants me to stab him!"
  Or, A knife is dulled by use, and all knives dull in time.
• Cut­lery Primer: "… past murals depict­ing Mediter­ranean scenes, towards the rotat­ing knives."
  Or, Ser­ra­tions are not a replace­ment for a keen edge.

For­mal­i­ties being cov­ered, let's take a brief detour to dis­cuss the prob­lem with ser­ra­tion of the aver­age kitchen knife.

Ser­ra­tions are not a replace­ment for a keen edge.

Judg­ing by the sheer vol­ume of cheap ser­rated knives I see on tele­vi­sion (like Chef Tony's Mir­a­cle Blades!), I believe that it's time for some­one to point out the pink ele­phant in the room: ser­ra­tions are often used to dis­guise a sub par edge on sub par steel, and to keep a sub par knife "sharp" longer.

What's wrong with ser­ra­tions? Well, ser­ra­tions are "ok" on a steak knife. Or any­thing that has to tear a lit­tle bit before it cuts or where you want to remove part of what­ever you're cut­ting. They're on a good reli­able bread knife. And they are pretty handy if you want to cut a tomato in a pinch but you don't own a thin-bladed knife. But you don't shave your face with a pull saw, and you shouldn't be doing prep work with a ser­rated blade.

The steel in most cheap knives has a very large, coarse crys­talline struc­ture, which leaves it unable to take a proper edge for very long. The steel just isn't hard enough or strong enough to even pre­tend. To com­pen­sate, these cheap knives are ser­rated, which turns them into tiny lit­tle saws, suit­able for cut­ting just about any­thing… that you would cut with a saw. Wooden dow­els! Card­board! Sty­ro­foam! Twigs, branches, and even roots; And if you wanted to half-ass it, I guess even your food.

So while tech­ni­cally the edge is "sharp", it's because you have a series of small teeth that are basi­cally tear­ing through what­ever is being cut, not actu­ally make a clean slice. So that means that unless you're "rough cut­ting" or going for "coun­try style" you're going to get a remark­able lack of finesse and agility from a ser­rated knife. Blunt, rough cuts with jagged edges abound.

Why do we use ser­rated steak knives? Because for the most part Amer­i­can cul­ture has been taught that cook­ing meat until it's shoe-leather is the only way to guar­an­tee that it's "safe". And do you know how you cut shoe-leather? Yep. Ser­ra­tions (or very sharp shears with a bit of lever­age behind them).

You hope­fully noticed a trend along the lines of "Know what else has ser­ra­tions? A saw." And if you want to cut your food the same way you'd saw a log, be my guest (I'm look­ing at you, Henck­les 'Ever­Sharp' and CutCo "Dou­ble D Edge"). Christ, Dou­ble D is a cup-size, not a knife edge.

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Our tan­gent down "what is wrong with you" lane has come to an end. Com­ing soon is part IV, "What goods' a knife in a nuke fight?" wherein we'll dis­cuss get­ting what you pay for and how not to pay for more than you're going to get.