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Originally Posted by foodpump  MMmmm, You shouldn't--actually don't need to-"hack through" bones. Find the joint with the soft cartlidge(sp?) and cut through. Chomping through a piece of chicken and spitting out bone fragments isn't all that nice, cut through the joint and you don't have this problem. |
Yes, right, for most purposes you don't need to hack through bones. But sometimes you do. For example, sometimes you want to cut the backbone out of a chicken in order to flatten it and grill it, e.g.
poulet grille au diable. You can do that with a poultry shears, but why buy one of those just to do this one thing once in a while? Use a heavy knife and cut through all the ribs just to one side, then the other, of the backbone. Another is when you do some kinds of roasting, you want to take the nub off the drumstick. Use the heel of a heavy knife and whack straight down through in one clean, hard stroke, and the nub will come off clean. But I wouldn't do either of those things with a thin gyuto -- I'd be afraid it would chip.
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4) When you sharpen--and here I mean using abrasives to establish a new edge--the rule of thumb is that the finer the abrasive you use, the better and longer lasting the edge is. Some go down as far as 8000-1200 grit range, which will give a mirror polish.
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Yes, but an edge that polished is so smooth that it easily skids over tough surfaces. For example, a knife polished that way doesn't cut tomatoes as easily as one sharpened at around 1000. Not to say you can't do it, of course, but technique matters more.
