Sorry it took so long to post--we are just learning how to get around ChefTalk. We get asked about the best butcher knives all the time, especially from the growing home processor and hobby farmers looking to raise or process their own animals, or at least have the animals slaughtered at a facility and primal cuts delivered for home cutting. We are in the process of finishing up an article for ChefTalk that will get into detail about uses for different knives, but I would like to give a brief summary.
First, my explanation of the uses of certain butcher knives is not all inclusive--so I will bet that there will be others join in with their uses for certain knife styles. I come from a restaurant, meat processing and ranching family and had 10 years experience as a federal regulator of the meat industry and have seen meat slaughter and processing plants from coast to coast from the largest, such as Tysons to the smallest mom and pop smokehouses and retail butcher shops. I am back in the family businesses now, but I thought I would provide a little back-ground about how I have used certain butcher knives and how they are used by the true professional butchers. The bulk of our business at Mad Cow Cutlery is to the commercial accounts--so we know what the top sellers are and how they are being used.
First, the boning knife. As the names states it was designed for boning out product. The type, whether straight or curved or flexible or stiff, is dependent on the user, but curved semi-flexible is the best seller. Straight-stiff is the worst seller. Six inch blades are the most popular. On the bone out lines of a majority of plants I have been to, they use a semi-stiff or flexible straight blade so they can curve and bend around bone to get smooth cuts with one quick pass. The curved boning knife is more popular, because it has more uses--it is used as a slicer for loins, works well as skinner on sheep and goats, used as a small breaking knife at leg joints, works well as a trim knife to remove hide or fecal material off carcasses, works well as a fat trimming knife, and so on. The curved end makes it easier slice and trim--especially in high speed animal processing facilities.
The breaking knife is used primarily for breaking down carcasses where you need a longer curved blade to cut all the way through a carcass and need the full range of cutting motion to make a clean cut. Some of the shorter breaking knives, such as the 8" blade knives have started finding popularity with the bbq crowd for trimming and slicing. It is favored over the traditional butcher knife and cimeter due to the lighter weight, since the blade is not as wide. I have observed one butcher use a 8" breaking knife for almost all of his trimming, slicing, etc.
Cimeter knives resemble the middle eastern swords and probably get their name and design from that region (someone can research it and let us know for sure). This is another take of the butcher knife used for trimming, breaking down cuts, slicing and so on. I have seen them used in a few larger beef processing plants on the cut-up side being used to trim fat and cut larger pieces down to smaller hunks. The blade on the cimeters are wider than a breaking knife, and add weight. In the processing environment, some prefer the wide blade to help keep the cut portions together during slicing, so a uniformed slice is easier to achieve.
The traditional style butcher knife--or the English version as some call them--are still popular, though we are seeing people using more cimeters, breaking knives and churrascaria style butcher knives. With the traditional butcher you get a wide blade and slight curve at the tip, which makes it a great all around knife. For home butchers, a short 7 to 8 inch butcher knife is a great tool. It works well slicing, trimming, and if needed can be used for skinning larger animals without the need to have to purchase a separate skinning knife. I actually keep a Victorinox 7" butcher knife as my outdoor hunting/fishing knife, because I find it a handy size for doing any camp food preparation, meat processing, or as a basic utility knife, plus it fits in a scabbard well.
http://www.madcowcutlery.com/store/pc/Victorinox-7-inch-Butcher-Knife-Fibrox-Handle-153p473.htm
The Churrasco or Churrascaria knife has been gaining in popularity. It is used in churrasco (bbq cooking) or at churrascarias--latin style steakhouses, where the meat is cut off the spicket--though I have been to some that did not. It is a straight blade that starts wide and narrows at tip. Some have a slight rocker to the edge or rounds slightly at the tip. For cutting portions of meat straight off a hunk of cooked product, these can be useful because you get full use of the cutting edge--though you can probably get the same basic results from other knives.
The skinning knife was designed for basically skinning. In the beef skinning models you have a curved blade that allows for full cut motion, especially up towards the front which is important during skinning. They usually feature wide blades and are around 5 to 6 inches in length. They are also useful in removing cheek meat and are used by some online USDA food inspectors to incise lymph nodes in the head and tongue. Lamb skinners or legging knives don't feature as much up turn on the tip, but are a useful in skinning smaller animals. I have seen them used in gutting animals, due to the blunt tip prevents some puncture and the slight curve of the blade allows to cut down the mid-section of the animal to release the viscera.
There are others butcher knives as well that are more specialized, such as sticking knives and gut/tripe knives.
In the US market, you see primarily 4 brands used in meat processing plants--Victorinox, Dexter-Russell, F. Dick, and Mundial (though Mundial is more popular in restaurants). You will from time to time see other brands such as Mercer and others, but I would say over half the large plants I have been in I see Victorinox. In the smaller plants and butcher shops you start seeing other brands used more, such as F. Dick and Mundial. F. Dick is real popular with some of the older established butcher shops and meat processing establishments. Since, meat slaughter and processing establishments work around extremely wet conditions and wearing gloves, the handle is very important. High nylon content textured handles that can provide excellent wet grip are really important as well as a comfortable grip that allows for a variety of hand positions. Handles such as Victorinox's Fibrox and Mundial's new Mundigrip do a good job of providing comfort and grip. When working around hogs especially, it is best to have a handle that doesn't have ridges or any recessed areas that can fill with fat and make the handle slick. It is hard to remove the fat and if it isn't removed then you can start cooking the proteins onto the handle and into the crevices when you hot water sanitize.
I hope this short summary helped a little and I hope others respond with their favorite butcher knife. We will be developing a wiki soon on different knives, blade materials, handle types, etc to help the new butchers/chefs with making a good decision. Just realize that different manufacturers have a varying degree of how flexible a flexible knife is and will sometimes have a difference of opinion on what is actually a breaking knife and cimeter--so there could be slight blade width differences in both. Thank you.
Daniel Clay
