foot—an extra bit of metal jutting out of the heel—which
you can use to scrape meat and connective tissue off the
bones to clean them. I’ve yet to find a more capable boning
knife than the Wüsthof Classic 6-inch Flexible Boning Knife
(about $85).
- A Good Heavy Cleaver
First things first: avoid expensive Japanese or German
cleavers, period. If they sell it at Williams-Sonoma, you
don’t want it. A cleaver is meant to be for only the toughest
of the tough jobs, and it will get beat up. It doesn’t require
the razor-sharp edge-maintaining abilities of expensive
German or Japanese steel, so there’s no sense in paying a
higher price for one when cheaper models are just as
serviceable.
My favorite is a heavy-duty 2-pound, full-tang, 8-inch-
bladed behemoth of a cleaver that I got for $15 at a
restaurant supply store in Boston’s Chinatown. I use it
nearly daily for taking apart chickens, hacking through
animal bones, mincing beef or pork for hand-chopped
burgers or dumplings, cleaving hearty vegetables, and
trying to look really badass in the mirror (it’s not so good at
that particular function). If you live near a restaurant supply
store, check it out for similar deals. As with all knives,
you’re looking for solid construction and a full tang. A
cleaver should be plenty heavy as well.
Alternatively, you can get the more mass-market 7-inch
wood-handled cleaver from Dexter-Russell (about $40). It’s
a tad more expensive—you’re paying for the label—but it
does exactly what it’s supposed to do: hack the shit out of