Cheese Knife Slices Cheddar Cleanly and Easily
I always wondered, what makes a cheese knife so special. Take a nicely sharpened kitchen knife (utility, paring, chef’s knife, etc.), and it can slice through cheese just fine, right? Yes, but this knife - aside from a very presentable aesthetic - is actually ingeniously clever in its engineering.Cheese knives, in general, are specifically made for slicing semi-soft cheeses like Cheddar, Gouda, Harvati, Fontina, Monterey Jack, etc. The holes, built into the relatively thin knife blade, are meant specifically to aid smooth separation of the cheese from the knife. In contrast, if you use a different kitchen knife, you will most likely encounter the cheese sticking to your knife blade and requiring, touching it with your fingers to peel it off your blade. By that time, the cheese, if it was cut thinly, may tear or deform.I put this knife to the test along with my Santoku knife of the same Syokami knife line for comparison and tried cutting three different cheeses, a hard block of Parmesan, a semi soft block of Cheddar and a soft, room temperature wheel of Brie. As predicted, the moist Cheddar cheese clung to the solid blade of the Santoku knife, but fell away cleanly and easily with the cheese knife. Additionally, the forked tip of the specialty knife, lets you spear the slices and chunks for serving after cutting. The large cut-outs in the cheese knife promote cleaner cuts with less suction and less friction. On the hard Parmesan, both knives performed well, but the thin cheese knife blade had a harder time cutting through the waxy rind of the Parmesan. It’s a classic engineering trade-off: the cheese knife sacrifices some rigidity to optimize release. The soft Brie was impossible to overcome and stuck to both knife blades. For this type of cheese, you are better off, using wire cutters or offset blades (please see all of my pictures).Aside from performing what it is specifically designed for, this specialty knife by Syokami balances Western and Japanese fusion design with a full tang, three (instead of two) rivets for more stability, a Western ergonomic Wenge wood handle that sits comfortably in the hand and a Japanese stainless blade finish with an elegant minimalist profile. An unexpected bonus is a bottle opener notch at the forked tip that will also be helpful to pierce through wax coatings on cheese wheels. Add to this a serrated knife blade that can easily be used to slice tomatoes and other soft vegetables, crusty breads and cured sausage, and you move out of the realm of novelty items and into the world of purposeful items. This is a really good knife!