Wüsthof 8 inch 970 Gram Cleaver Review

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You do not need to own an 8 inch, 970g Wüsthof cleaver. If you are the type of person who only buys things that you truly read then you should stop reading now. If you are the type of person who occasionally buys things you know you don’t need but really want, by all means, continue reading, because this review is meant for you.

This knife is the least used knife in my collection, but I absolutely love using it. I primarily use it for quartering chickens, but I also use it for cutting up chicken wings into segments every now and then. If you want to try this knife at home, be sure to use the thickest butcher block you can find, because if you try quartering a chicken with this thing on a normal cutting board you will likely cut your board in half and damage your counter top.

For those of you unfamiliar with metric, 970 grams is a little over two pounds. That’s a lot of kitchen knife. The knife comes with a disclaimer that it should not be used with frozen foods or large bones, but pay that no heed; that is just the same standard disclaimer they put in with all their other mortal knives. You can safely hack through a moose’s femur with this thing. Frozen foods are far more afraid of this knife that it is of frozen foods, and for good reason.

To be clear, this is not a kitchen tool; it is a kitchen toy. You may find yourself buying things at the grocery store purely on the basis of whether they can be hacked up. My consumption of whole chickens spiked dramatically after I bought this knife. Nobody reading this review truly needs to own this knife, but I would recommend it to each and every one of you.

Why Do All Fast Food Restaurants Assume You Want the Combo?

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I am a home cooking enthusiast who prepares most all of our meals from scratch, but I still very much enjoy a good fast food hamburger, particularly during working hours when I’m busy running errands. It’s just so tempting to turn into a drive through lane. They each have their own unique style of burger, but there is one thing that seems to unite every single fast food restaurant; a complete inability to contemplate that someone would ever consider ordering a burger without fries and a soft drink.

Almost without fail, whenever I order a hamburger the person will either ask me what I would like for the drink or if I would like to large size the meal. Then I have to clarify that it is just the burger that I want and they have to go and change the order, no doubt cursing me under their breath for being so difficult. It isn’t that I don’t like fries or soft drinks, it’s just that I enjoy the burger more and I don’t feel it is worth doubling the calories of my lunch to add the French fries.

What I find surprising is that it must be exceedingly rare for anyone to ever not get the combo. If people were regularly just getting a single hamburger I’m sure they wouldn’t automatically assume combos, but I get the impression that people must go weeks without every coming across a customer who declines to go for the combo. I understand that combos can be a good deal, but surely I’m not the only person who just wants to grab a burger to hold me over until supper?

I Think I Know the Secret Ingredient in Mary Brown’s Fried Chicken

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Most people reading this probably have not heard of Mary Brown’s fried chicken restaurants, but it is more popular than Kentucky Fried Chicken in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and has numerous locations throughout Atlantic Canada as well as in Ontario and Alberta. Its expansion over the years has pretty much tracked the migration of Newfoundland workers, first to Toronto, and then to Alberta, where Newfoundlanders make up a disproportionately large portion of workers in the oil industry.

Much like KFC, Mary Brown’s aficionados have frequently tried to replicate the recipe, with varying levels of success. I’ve never tried to replicate any famous fast food recipes myself, but in trying to create my own chicken finger recipe I think I may have stumbled upon the secret ingredient that has prevented anyone from successfully replicating it in the past; Aleppo pepper.

I ordered some Aleppo pepper online after seeing it used in a Million Dollar Chicken recipe video on YouTube, and I decided to add some to my chicken finger recipe to give it a little extra zip. That was in addition to my standard ingredients of salt, pepper, thyme and oregano. The first thing I thought of was how much it reminded me of the Mary Brown’s taste.

This was not long after a story appeared on the local news that Mary Brown’s was expanding into Turkey. As the chain had always chosen to stick to areas with a sizeable concentration of Newfoundlanders, expanding into Turkey seemed strangely random and made no sense. But Aleppo pepper comes from that region and is a very commonly used spice in Turkey, and so if that is indeed one of the main ingredients then the decision suddenly seems a little less random, albeit still a curious one. This is obviously just idle speculation on my part, but before you dismiss the idea, try adding a little Aleppo pepper to your homemade fried chicken recipe and see if it tastes strangely familiar.

Williams Food Equipment

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If you like high end kitchen tools, but don’t happen to live in a big city like Toronto, then you probably do most of your shopping online. Kitchen supplies, particularly high end knives, are often sold through smaller, more specialized niche companies, which can make making a purchase seem like a leap of faith. I have bought from many online retailers with varying degrees of success. I am writing today about one of the best, Williams Food Equipment.

Williams Food Equipment appears to be one of the largest suppliers of “food equipment” in the country. They have a large selection of just about every type of kitchen product. I have bought several Wusthof knives and Le Cruset pots and pans from them and have no major complaints about any of my purchases. They generally have products in stock, which is big factor when buying online. Some retailers have slick looking websites but are small and unable to maintain much inventory, so you sometimes have to wait weeks, if not months, to receive your order.

My first order from Williams did take almost two weeks to ship, but that was an exception. My other orders shipped right away. One great thing about them is that they are very responsive. When you go the website a chat window will open, and they will actually respond to you quite quickly. When my first order was delayed, someone would always respond to my inquiry. They were honest about the fact that my knives were not in stock when I made my purchase and that they were waiting on a shipment from Germany.

One thing that some people find slightly annoying about the site is that while you are browsing a chat window will pop up. Most people hate pop ups but the saving grace for this website is that they seem to employ some bright, good natured people to man the chat rooms. One night I decided to have a little fun with them just to see how they would react, and the person on the other end was both professional and good-natured. I have included an excerpt of the exchange below.

Williams Food Equipment Chat

 

One thing that rubs me the wrong way a little bit is that they are one of these retailers that always have a major sale. I am on their mailing list, so every week I get notified of a major sale. Valentine’s sale, St. Paddy’s day sale, Easter sale, lunar eclipse sale, etc. You need to browse the site regularly and compare to other sites to be clear on what exactly is a sale is and what isn’t. Generally you will find that even if you are not getting the once in a lifetime deal you thought, you can be usually be confident that you aren’t paying any more than you would at any other site.

The Sculpin is the World’s Least Respected Fish

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The current culinary trend seems to be to not just to eat every part of an animal, but to eat all animals, except of course, seals and anything that may be kept as a pet. This trend, though it has dramatically accelerated in recent years, has actually been in place for decades. A century ago in Newfoundland, (where I am from), rich people would eat codfish and serve the hired help lobster. Lobster were (rightly) viewed as marine insects and people who could afford to pick and choose what they ate wanted nothing to do with them. Now, of course, lobster is one of the more expensive types of seafood you will find in your grocery store. In Newfoundland these days any high end restaurant will have all manner of marine insects on their menu and you can even find yourself a seal burger, but there is one fish that has been conspicuously absent from any restaurant menu; the sculpin.

If you don’t know what a sculpin is and don’t like googling things, just walk out on any wharf in Newfoundland on a calm day, look down at the water, and the ugliest, scariest fish you see is a sculpin. It has an oversized mouth, oversized lips, bulging eyes, and has long, sharp spines on its back and fins. With the exception of the past decade or so, Newfoundlanders have been poor for much of the past several hundred years, with many people going hungry. No Newfoundlander, however, has ever been so hungry that he would resort to eating a sculpin, even though they are the easiest fish in the world to catch.

Sculpins just hang around wharves. Salt water is crystal clear compared to salt water, so on a sunny day you can just drop your hook and bait right in front of the Sculpin’s face. They generally put up little fight, so you just reel them in after they take the bait. The first fish I ever caught was a sculpin. I was very proud. Then my buddy’s father took it off the hook and threw it back in the water. It was probably caught 10 times that week. If you live near the ocean you can literally eat them for free, yet nobody does.

My local grocery store sells frog legs and octopus for twice the price of codfish, yet nobody eats sculpin for free. People seem to eat everything these days, but it seems so odd that nobody has ever tried to eat a sculpin. It may very well taste awful, but it can’t be any more awful than half the things people are eating these days.

David Cameron Doesn’t Know How to Eat a Hot Dog

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Today I saw a picture of the British Prime Minister eating a hot dog with a knife and fork. It wasn’t a secret photo of him at home or on vacation published by a tabloid. No, this was a media event organized by David Cameron himself at the house of a regular person who would be benefiting from some changes that his government had made to the tax system. He knew everything he did was being recorded for all the country to see, he ate a hot dog with a knife and fork.

When some people in North America saw that picture, they might have assumed that cutting up hot dogs with knives and forks is some of strange British custom, like soccer rioting and needing a license to watch television. I’m not British, but I did spend a year in England, and during my time there I saw a number of people eat hot dogs. None of them used either a knife or a fork. They simply picked up the hot dog with their hands just like every other person anyone has ever seen eating a hot dog.

There isn’t a politician in North America whose political career could survive a picture of them eating a hot dog with a knife and fork. Bill Clinton’s reputation would be worse today if he had eaten a hot dog with a knife and fork instead of cheating on his wife with an intern in the Oval Office. People can relate to cheating on their wives; they can’t relate to eating a hot dog with a knife and fork.

The problem for David Cameron is that he has never been photographed using the wrong fork during a meal. He has no trouble selecting the proper fork for the salad, the main course, and the desert. He no doubt switches his fork to his left hand for cutting and then back to his right hand for eating. He knows the proper glass to drink Champaign out of and certainly knows that black caviar is better than red caviar, but yet he doesn’t know how to eat a hot dog.

That David Cameron will likely survive this embarrassing photo says a lot about politics in the UK. The British have long been accustomed to being governed by people who were raised in a life of privilege, went to exclusive private schools and, and have little connection to the average person. Ronald Reagan’s father was a salesman in rural Illinois. Bill Clinton’s father died before he was born and had an abusive, alcoholic step-father. Barack Obama’s parents broke up when he was an infant and spent much of his later childhood being raised by his parents.

It is tempting to pass off that hot dog photo and just one of a thousand funny but meaningless pictures of a politician, but it is much more than that. While North American political leaders come from all walks of life, and even have different colour skin, British Prime Ministers almost always grew up in a life of privilege apart from the common person. The hot dog photo explained that much better than a thousand words could ever do.

Who Does Like Ice Cold Camembert?

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Senator Nancy Ruth has taken a lot of heat over her comments about refusing to settle for her free breakfast of ice cold Camembert and broken crackers, but I can’t help but find the criticism a little overdone. Camembert is a soft cheese that is meant to be spread over crackers or a nice bread. If it is ice cold it is impossible to spread. It is unclear whether the senator was served broken crackers or if they were broken when she tried to spread the cold cheese on them. I suspect it was the latter.

Some things are perfectly fine served a little cold; pizza, cheddar, revenge. Camembert is not one of them. If it is too cold to spread on the crackers, what the hell was this woman supposed to do with it? Pick it up in her hand like a Pizza Pop and just start chowing down on it? In these days of camera phones and airplane Wi-Fi, a picture of a senator gnawing on big Camembert disc would have gone viral before the plane even landed.

I will confess that I am biased by the fact that I don’t much care for Camembert myself. If I want cheese and crackers I generally stick with plain old cheddar. I never know quite what to do with the rind. I know it’s edible, but edible and appetizing are not the same; they aren’t even synonyms. If you don’t eat the rind, you end up making a god awful mess of things trying to just get at the soft cheese. It’s just not worth the trouble. Nancy Ruth may well be a typical senator’s sense of privilege and entitlement, but I can’t blame her for taking a stand against cold Camembert.

Why Can’t Americans Make Gravy?

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I am a Canadian, but unlike most Canadians, I don’t dislike Americans. I don’t feel threatened by them, I don’t envy them, and though I don’t find them any more arrogant than Torontonians. Many Canadians have made a living criticizing the United States. Lord knows Americans have their flaws, and pretty much every one of them has been pointed out a thousand times over, but there is one flaw that has not received nearly enough attention; their ability to make gravy.

Growing up, I took gravy for granted. My mother, my aunts, all my friends’ mothers, all of them could make gravy. Even the fathers and uncles could make gravy in a pinch, so I assumed that anyone in the civilized world who could cook could make gravy. Then I got a job that required me to frequently travel to the United States.

I will never forget my first encounter with American gravy. I believe it was in Nashville, and I had some mashed potatoes with gravy. At first I thought they forgot to pour the gravy on the potatoes, but when I looked more closely I could see that the gravy was the same colour as the potatoes. I thought someone was playing a joke on me, but I could see that everyone else at the table had the same horrifyingly pale gravy. This came as a shock to me as Americans always seemed to talk about gravy a lot, so I naturally assumed they took great pride in their gravy. I first heard the expression “everything else is just gravy” in an American movie, Platoon.

It isn’t just that Americans don’t use gravy browning. Proper gravy is still someone dark in texture before the gravy browning is added, and even the lightest turkey gravy isn’t white. It’s as if Americans add bleach to their gravy. It’s so strange that Americans have such a light coloured, bland gravy, when their cooking is generally known for being heavy and rich. How is it that Canadian gravy could possibly be so much thicker, richer, saltier, and tastier than American gravy? American cooking has always been open to embracing the cuisine of other countries, most notably China, Mexico, and Italy. Perhaps it’s time for them to steal a gravy recipe from their Canadian neighbours.

When Did the Debate Over GMO Food End?

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About 15 years or so ago there seemed to be a raging debate about whether genetically modified food was going to solve the world’s hunger problems or destroy mankind. I was living in England at the time, a place that seemed to have a particularly acute preoccupation with food safety, no doubt due to the presence of both mad cow disease and Paul McCartney.

I was never really that concerned about genetically modified foods. I always figured something else would kill me long before genetically modified canola, so I never really paid that close attention to the debate, but I was always at least vaguely aware of its existence.

In recent years, as I became a father to a couple of kids and started taking a serious interest in food, I couldn’t help but notice that there didn’t seem to be anyone talking about the dangers of GMO foods anymore. It seems that for most people gluten is a much bigger worry than GMO foods. Organic and locally grown foods, which tend not to be genetically modified, are growing in popularity, but most of the interest in those foods more to do with the lack of toxic pesticides than alterations to the food’s genetic makeup.

To be honest though I don’t really understand what is different about organic fruits and vegetables other than that they are more expensive and have more spots on them. I wonder if scientists were to someday be able modify an apple such that the apple actually developed the ability to eat its pests, thereby eliminating the need for pesticides, would the apples then be considered organic? But I digress…

Did the opponents of GMO foods simply give up or were they just soundly beaten by the giant food companies? I suspect it was some combination of the two. Large multinationals have an admirable track record when it comes to doing battle against concerned citizens, so the result was probably never really in doubt. But after a couple decades of eating all these GMO foods, humanity doesn’t seem any worse for wear, so perhaps the right side won that war.

Beer Snobs Are Worse Than Wine Snobs

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For many years now, wine snobs have been unrivaled as the most notorious and annoying in the realm of snobbery. Wine bottles were the perfect vessel for conveying ones superiority over the common man. There are a seemingly endless amount of small and exclusive wineries that allowed someone with only an upper middle class income to drink wine that a neighbor or friend had never seen. By contrast, the barriers to entry into the world of car snobbery are prohibitive to most people, as you would have to spend some serious money to drive a car that none of your friends had ever seen up close before.

Wine also give snobs much more opportunity to revel in their snobbery, what with books and courses that explain how to properly drink and appreciate wine as well as a huge vocabulary of adjectives, most of which are completely devoid of actual meaning, to describe wines. You don’t need to do a course to learn how to enjoy a Ferrari. You put the top down, find an open road, and stomp on the gas pedal. For snob points per dollar, nothing could compare to wine. Until now.

Snobby wine drinkers have long looked at beer drinkers with disdain. While the image of the wine drinker was one of culture and sophistication, a beer drinker was symbolized by the guy in the sports bar watching football and washing down 4 pounds of hot wings with a gallon of light lager, English soccer hooligans, Homer Simpson, and middle aged slow pitch softball players. Then just a few years ago, hipsters starting mobilizing themselves and created the rapidly growing world of beer snobbery.

I don’t know why but I personally find beer snobs exponentially more annoying than wine snobs. It was always accepted that if you drink enough wine with people you would eventually cross paths with a wine snob, but beer drinking was always a pretension-free oasis, where you could simply relax with friends and enjoy the beer of your choice or whatever your friends were offering. Then all of a sudden you had these stocking cap wearing, bearded zealots popping up everywhere who look down on anyone who didn’t stand in line for two hours in rural Vermont to drop $20 on a six pack of beer.

I actually enjoy most of the beers that beer snobs love, I just don’t feel the same vitriol at the types of beers they hate. While I generally prefer more flavorful beers, I have no problem drinking you average light lager. Those who turn their noses up at mainstream beer brands have clearly never gotten drunk on their neighbor’s home brew.