It's long and skinny, like a bread knife. It doesn't show well in the photo, but there's a tiny fine serration on the edge of one of those pointy things…? I've asked the 2 chefs I know, and neither one of them even had a guess!
3 Answers
It's a serrated carving knife. In fact, that particular knife is a Kitchen + Home Carving Bread Knife – 8” Sharp Stainless Steel Serrated All Purpose Kitchen Knife available from WalMart for $13USD.
The forked point is for skewering and serving slices of meat after you've carved them (see photo on listing).
If the knife had been much smaller, it could have been a tomato knife. It still could be, if you have really big tomatoes.
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8@user3067860 Generally speaking, a hole in this location would be for hanging the knife on a nail or hook, such as with a traditional cleaver. It's debatable whether this hole would actually be useful for that purpose or is merely decorative. Commented Jan 11, 2023 at 19:34
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4I think the hole, per Bloodgain, could be best described as a "bad idea". Either that, or they wanted to make the end of the knife look more like a fish. It is a Walmart knife, don't assume that a lot of thought went into the design. Commented Jan 12, 2023 at 1:13
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2The brass band used to have one like this, it was left behind after a street fest. I always called it "the fish knife". Eventually someone else (or the original owner) decided they liked it and it disappeared again. Excellent knife, by the way.– RedSonjaCommented Jan 12, 2023 at 8:13
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3"Any knife can be a tomato knife if you believe hard enough in it." Commented Jan 12, 2023 at 14:48
It's a frozen food knife actually. I never understood what the "forky" tip is for. Just google for "frozen food knife" and you will find more examples that look like this.
Quote from https://www.recipetips.com/glossary-term/t--38022/frozen-food-knife.asp:
"Built to cut through hard to semi-hard substances, this utensil is manufactured for specialty tasks. A common cutting blade used for this type of knife is the saw- toothed blade which may be called a saw-and-racker tooth or a coarse saw tooth blade. A saw-toothed blade has tiny but coarse teeth that are closely aligned and formed to cut through materials such as metal surfaces. The saw-and-racker blade contains an alternating blade construction with each set of double toothed blade extensions separated by a curved serrated blade surface. Typically, the Frozen Food Knife blade is made of a rigid steel that can withstand very cold temperatures and the heavier than normal cutting pressure required to cut through ice hard substances, such as frozen foods. Also the back and forth motion required for cutting hardened objects causes non-rigid blades to bend or quiver. Simple tasks such as cutting apart a small carton of frozen peas can be easily accomplished with this knife or harder tasks of cutting larger blocks of frozen vegetables and breads can be undertaken with a knife built to cut frozen foods."
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@StuartF links go stale, but sure... updated with more info– user102596Commented Jan 14, 2023 at 6:36
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We used to have one like this knife, one side, and normal wavey edge on the other side, sold as 'good to cut frozen foods'. It was almost never used, maybe due to the sharp edges both sides.– WillekeCommented Jan 14, 2023 at 11:58
I have the same type of knife, and we've always used it to slice/cut bread! It works surpringly well as most "serrated" knifes I've used for bread, are not usually sharp, but these serrations are sharp, which would work well for meat. I've used it for frozen food and it's okay, but I rarely do this.
I always thought that the tips where meant to serve meat, but whenever we cooked a big piece of meat to be sliced afterwards (like carne a la sal), we (my house) use a slicing knife (jamonero knife), the one that you would use to cut jamón. Maybe in other countries they use the serrated sharpy knife!
looks like an fish itself
:O