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Hey guys, I've had a set of Global knives for a few months now and love them.

I cut up a whole chicken the other day, and had a bit of trouble getting through the bone, so use my large chef's knife as an axe/butcher's knife and chipped it in a few places. Global is supposed to be the superior brand, but is this normal?

So how do you guys handle tougher materials? Butcher/cheap/dull knives?

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    I just use a cheap, large chefs knife for dirty jobs like chopping up chickens or larger fish/shellfish. If you want to be serious about it you could always get a proper cleaver or a japanese-style Deba bocho knife.
    – Henrik Söderlund
    Feb 17, 2011 at 13:09
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    If you use a chef's knife, then European style chef's knives are more suitable than Japanese style ones, because Japanese knives have thinner blades and a sharper angle, making them more susceptible to chipping.
    – Erik P.
    Feb 17, 2011 at 14:35
  • @Erik P: I just googled this, because I was pretty sure that the deba bocho was suitable for chopping up chickens, but now I am not so sure anymore. Wikipedia says explicitly that the deba bocho is not suitable for chopping large diameter bones: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deba_bocho The questions is, would a chicken bone classify as "large diameter"?
    – Henrik Söderlund
    Feb 17, 2011 at 14:47
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    In some cases I don't use a knife at all - kitchen shears work much better when I need to go through a bone.
    – justkt
    Feb 17, 2011 at 15:16

2 Answers 2

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As you can see here, you can do it with a chef's knife.

I think you must try to cut between bones or around them, not through them. Gristle shouldn't be a problem for your knife.

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    Yeah I realized that a few minutes later :)
    – Mike
    Feb 17, 2011 at 17:50
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If you're just separating a chicken into pieces, you don't need to cut through any bone, and a chef's knife or a boning knife will work fine. You need to aim for the joints in between the bones, and cut the softer connective tissue.

If you're actually trying to hack legs and thighs into pieces (some indian curries, stocks, and other preparations do well with splitting bones), then you need a heavy duty meat cleaver (note: a "chinese cleaver" has a thin blade, and is unsuitable to cutting through bones). A chef's knife would work, but can dent or chip the blade of your expensive Global knife.

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