I have no brand to recommend but be sure it is a "meat cleaver" and not just a cleaver. Many of them are not designed to cut through bones so make sure the one you buy is.

I love my Shun 8" chef's knife, but I don't have a meat cleaver. The reason I chose this knife is the balance, the bolster design and the weight (it's light but still very sturdy). I think you'd be well served by going to a store and just trying a bunch of different knives. Maybe call ahead and see if you can bring stuff to cut? :) Ok, so maybe bringing raw chicken to a store isn't the best idea, but if you test out chef's knifes and such carrots could be good.

Four knives serve all my purposes:

Largest available chef's knife. (can do almost any cutting task)

Serrated bread knife.

Paring knife. (nice but not essential)

Fish fillet knife. (needed only if you fillet fish)

Either Wusthof or Henckels are good makes. For fish fillet, consider Rapala or Frost.

Jim

BTW, a heavy chef's knife works well for cutting up a chicken. Most of the cuts are through joints, not directly through bones. The only cut through bones is through small, weak bone and is easily done.

Keep those knives sharp!

Jim

paddy, thanks for that tip! I didn't know that.

Jim, thank you for your input as well. Maybe I should just start with a chef's knife and see how that works on the chicken? Especially since it can be used for so many other things. The meat cleaver really did do a tremendous job, though.

And, yeah, I know I'm supposed to keep the knives sharp. I even have a honing stone that belonged to my great uncle (who was born around 1900 or before). It has a greasy feel to it so I guess it was not a 'whet stone'. I've always been a little afraid to use it as I don't know quite what to do. Do you? Or anyone else?

Thank you for the info. I appreciate it.

Tammy

Bri, sorry, I didn't mean to leave you out. I would love to be able to actually test some knives out but where on earth would you do such a thing? I figure you are joking, but I can see how that could be a real possibility at times. That would definitely be a dream knife shopping trip!

Although I don't own a cleaver, in the past I've bought knives online from The Knife Merchant & I know they have a good selection of quality cleavers & steels, as well as info about choosing the right one. I'm not affiliated with this website, but I've been very pleased with their recommendations, price, & fast shipping.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Knife Merchant

Ditto what Jim said about cutting chickens. You cut through the joint areas anyway, and a good chefs knife will cut through the bone to cut a chicken breast in half.

I've always thought it would be sort of fun to have a good meat cleaver, but in all honesty, I'm not sure I've ever actually needed one. Maybe if we butchered our own meat...

I would probably ditch the cleaver for now and see if you feel you still want it after investing in a good chef's knife and a good paring knife.

I have other knives, but could easily live with those two knives only - oh, and something for cutting bread - I prefer an electric knife for that, though, especially if I'm cutting the whole loaf at once. I use it to cut boneless ham into slices, too.

Judi

I've had this cleaver for fifteen years & absolutely love it!

/tricia

Here is a link that might be useful: Meat Cleaver

I also echo what Jim said. Forget the cleaver and stick with a good 8" chefs knife. I bought a set of F. Dick knives for school. Love them. They were recommended by the Chefs at school. I recently bought a Henckels 8" chefs knife from TJ Maxx for $25 and love the weight and feel of it in my hand.

I got my F. Dick knives from here for a great price.

I have every knife in a standard set plus a couple extras, mostly Wusthoff. For cutting up a chicken I find the fastest and easiest is to use a sharp boning knife and a pair of kitchen shears. The only time I'd use my chef's knife is if I'm splitting a bone-in breast, but more often than not I'm cutting off the cutlets.

I won't say I don't use my meat cleaver, but if I had to start over from scratch it would be the last knife on my wish list. Chef's would be the first, and I've been dying to try a Shun.

trsinc, if there is a dept store with a large kit selection or WS you can get to try to handle different knives. I set out to get Henckles Four Star and ended up with Wusthof Classic. They were more comfortable in my hands. I use the small bread knife, chef knife and parer.

To know more than any sane person needs to know about sharpening knives, visit the web site at the link. It discusses different techniques for sharpening and different items of sharpening equipment. A few years ago I bought a paper wheel sharpening system from that site, and I am very pleased. Pros: I can put a razor edge on virtually any beat up old knife in just a few minutes. Cons: requires some workshop space for a dedicated bench grinder.

That old whetstone will work well to sharpen knives, but the results depend on your technique. You have to hold the knife at a consistent angle to the surface. The stone feels greasy because you put honing oil on the surface; the oil floats away the little steel particles liberated by the honing process.

I have a bunch of knives, both stainless and old fashioned carbon steel. I have a couple of old meat cleavers as well. I find that for cutting up chickens, I use a heavy chef knife or a boning knife. Poultry shears are pretty handy as well. I find I only use the cleavers when I'm chopping chicken parts coarsely for the stockpot; for chickens I'm gonna consume, I use knives to cut them up.

My favorite cleaver, though, I got at a yard sale for $3. It's old carbon steel (i.e., it rusts) but it takes a great edge. I can sharpen it much more easily and to a sharper edge than my stainless steel cleaver. It's heavy, though, and its purpose is to whack through bones and gristle--it isn't like a chinese cleaver that's thin and razor sharp for chopping vegetables.

When it comes to selecting knives, I'd list these three factors as the most important: First, balance. If it don't feel right, it ain't right. What works for one person may be all wrong for another person. Second, ease of sharpening. I advise everyone that helps me in my kitchen that I keep all my knives extremely sharp. It's safer that way because you use less effort to cut stuff and therefore less likely to slip. A distant third--appearance.

Some of my favorite knives are old beat up carbon steel knives that look terrible, but they fly through meat and vegetables with little resistance. Love 'em. They're hard to find, though, and if you see them on eBay they often go pretty high because there are many other old fogies like me that like them. (Full disclosure: while I enjoy this cyber world of the Internet, in many other ways I'm a bit of a Luddite. I like carbon steel knives, I listen to vinyl LPs through a vacuum tube amplifier, and I write with a fountain pen.)

You really don't need a whole lot of knives. A few good ones would suffice. A good chef's knife (size depends on how many people you cook for; an 8" blade is good if you only cook for two or three people, but if you never cook for a huge crowd, no sense in getting one with a 12" blade), a good boning knife (long skinny stiff blade), a paring knife or two--those would handle most tasks. Throw in a cheap serrated blade bread knife and you're good to go.

Proper knife storage is a good idea for both safety and for keeping the edges from being damaged. I have a wall-mounted magnetic knife rack by MIU (Amazon, $20) that keeps the knives readily available but safely stored.

Rereading this post, I think you may be thinking I should sign it "Sweeney Todd, London" but I promise I am relatively sane.

Here is a link that might be useful: sharpening made easy

Tammy~
My local specialty cooking store pretty much always has stuff out for you to test at least a few of their knives. I happened to go on a weekend they had a couple of knife reps there with tons of veggies and fruit to test with. They let me try every knife in the store before I bought my Shun. :) That was a fun hour and a half! One of the sales guys even offered to go buy a loaf of artisan bread so I could try the bread knives...

Do you have a store that specializes in cooking goodies? It may be worth a phone call to see if they'll let you play. I certainly wouldn't expect a place like Bed Bath and Beyond to do this, but a smaller, locally owned store might.

Bri

Arley, vacuum tubes? Really?

Yup. They're still around. Some people, myself included, prefer the sound of tubes--warmer, and the distortions it produces are less offensive to the ear than the sometimes sterile sound of solid state amps--even though if you measure the output of amplifiers, solid state amps measure better. I just prefer the tube sound. Your ears may tell you differently.

Last year I built the one at the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: tube amp

You're not alone Arley, my DH has two tube amps in his car (along with a solid state). This is the car he built for sound quality competitions with full sponsorship from an audio equipment manufacturer... The imaging and sound quality are incredible, but they should be for more than $20K! Bottom line is, there are lots of vacuum tube guys out there! But we were talking about knives, weren't we? :)

Bri

I also have an old carbon steel cleaver....as well as a Chinese cleaver...I like them to split a bone in chicken breast.
Chinese cleacvers can be very inespensive in China town.
Linda C

Just one more OT post. It's dedicated to Arley.

Jim

Here is a link that might be useful: Cartoon

Back on topic for just a sec - Arley, could you explain why you relate size of crowd to size of a chef's knife? I'm thinking I use the same technique to chop up one onion (or whatever) or twenty, and for that I'd defer back to your suggestion of get whatever feels right to you. Whether that happens to be 8" or 12". (Shut up EJ.)

LOL Jim!!

Re: the size of a chef knife--when I'm just cooking for the DW and myself, I usually don't have to cut up a whole lot of stuff. Sure you can use a large knife, but a small one walks through the (small) pile of onion or whatever just about as fast. Certainly the best situation is to have two, one medium (8 or 10 inch blade) and one big honkin' one (12 inches or so) to attack that mountain of vegetables to be chopped up.

And of course when I'm cooking for a huge crowd, or making a lot of stuff for the freezer, I'll cheat and get out the food processor.

One other thing: while all those expensive Henkels or Sabatiers or whatever are lovely tools, some time back Cooks Illustrated reviewed chef's knives and one of the most highly rated knives was a fairly inexpensive R.H. Forschner Victorinox knife with a Fibrox handle. I have a Forschner utility knife and it certainly is good steel, one of my favorite stainless knives. Hard to go wrong at this price.

Here is a link that might be useful: Forschner chef knife

I've used a Chinese chef's knife (sometimes called a Chinese cleaver) as my principal knife for the last 40+ years. With some care to strike squarely it can halve a chicken in two blows. (Strike at even a slight angle and it can slip, cut you and/or permanently damage the edge.) The same knife can be used to do something as delicate as peeling an apple (which I do regularly) or carving a radish rose (which a chef friend does regularly).

Dexter-Russell makes very good Chinese chef's knives. They are the only knives in the kitchen of our favorite Chinese restaurant. (The chef-owner is the friend I mentioned.) We have two in our kitchen - a largish one for me and a smallish one for DW. They retail for $30-$35 in restaurant supply houses and $40-$50 from consumer cooking sources.

I recently had an opportunity to try the $175 Shun Chinese chef's knife that I have long coveted. It felt nice in the hand, was amazingly sharp out of the box, and will doubtless hold its edge better than my Dexter-Russell, but there is no way I could justify spending the additional $140.

Poultry shears. Much easier on your wrists and hands. My husband's a chef, and I converted him. (And he's a tube amp guy.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Henkels Poultry Shears

I have two cleavers and do nt like to use them. One whack, in the wrong place and you have a badly cut up bird.

Poultry shears and a good chefs or a boning/filet knife do it for me. I rarely buy cut up birds. I want all the bird, as the backs are good for stock. Cut up packs don't always give you those.

Thanks everybody! I've learned a lot from this thread and now I've got all kinds of brands to look into.

And great post, Arley. :) Thanks for that sharpening site. My husband has a bench grinder so I'll get him to figure out which wheel needs to be purchased. I love that thing for sharpening garden tools. I'd be better about sharpening knives if I could use it for them too!

You must add a ceramic Santoku 5 1/2" blade length small chef's knife to your collection. They are on sale now with no shipping cost. Fabulous knife! Not meant for heavy duty, banging, twisting jobs. But, the first time you use one to carve a turkey or roast, dice veggies and herbs you will recogonize that it is worth every penny! Will stay sharp for years and then is returned to the company for sharpening when needed. Everyone should put this knife on Santa's list.

Nandina, I have been told the Santoku knives are very good and that I should get one. Can you provide a link to the company you are referring to?

Jim

Jim, at the moment the following two businesses appear to have the best deal:

chefresource.com

chefknivestogo.com

I'd be interested in other peoples experience with ceramic knives. I used a friend's once an couldn't believe how sharp it was, then used it again a few weeks later and couldn't believe how dull it was. That didn't impress me at all - nor does having to "send it out" to get sharpened. Seems you'd need two if you want it to be your favorite knife. (I don't know the brand of hers, but I do know it came from Wms Sonoma.)

I've never had a ceramic knife, but Elery had a ceramic peeler (I think Kyocera) that he loved and will replace since he broke it.

I spent all four years of high school working in a chicken/sub joint and can cut a whole chicken into 9 pieces in less than 2 minutes. Two wings, two legs, two thighs, two breast pieces and a back. I have a cleaver I never use, I use a large KitchenAid chef's knife which Elery sharpens for me every time he touches it. I'd like a really "good" knife like a Wusthof or something similar but I sure can't justify that kind of price when my $12.00 KitchenAid (from Marshall's) does a fine job.

Annie