After the fifth tomato, I needed to understand how my knife did. With out judgment, Heimendinger introduced that it positioned “second to final within the cohort.” I felt duty for this knife, and a little bit embarrassment, till I remembered his knives got here straight out of the field and into the testing course of with an unblemished manufacturing unit edge. My knife, however, had been in common use in my check kitchen for greater than six months receiving solely the occasional honing. Plus, I famous protectively that these tomatoes appeared greater than those he used throughout his essential battery of testing.
He continued by way of the opposite 4 meals: potatoes, cheese cubes, child carrots, and King’s Hawaiian rolls, the latter chosen for his or her extraordinarily uniform inside.
Understandably, my knife did not fare notably properly, however I used to be in a position to get an appreciation for Scott’s testing and data-gathering course of.
Even with the robotic, accumulating this quantity of knowledge took plenty of time. Every bit of meals wanted to be loaded and unloaded from the size, the knife wiped, cleaned, and dried after each stroke, the room saved cool, the entire thing taking place throughout that monotonous bender of a weekend, Don Henley and Tears for Fears taking part in again and again.
As soon as he obtained all that knowledge and made dozens and dozens of charts and graphs, what did he be taught?
“How scattered the outcomes are.”
Per his testing, three chef’s knives have been pretty blazingly improbable, doing properly throughout the board: a Shun Basic Hole Edge, a Moritaka Hamono, and a Tojiro Skilled. Quantity 4 was bizarre: The $300 Wüsthof Amici (similar to their improbable Basic however with a distinct bolster and deal with) aced every thing besides the carrots, at which it was fairly unhealthy. The final two slots, 20 and 21, have been additionally properly secured, by a Henckels Basic and the $18 Zwilling Answer Effective Edge.
But the stuff within the center—slots 5 to 19, greater than two-thirds of the check group—have been what he was referring to when he stated “scattered,” performing properly in a single class and poorly in one other.
“You’ll suppose that an ideal tomato knife would make an ideal potato knife,” he stated earlier than noting that wasn’t essentially the case. “It’s bananas.”
These three knives on the high of his rankings really feel like secure bets. I might even really feel fairly good about lumping that Wusthöf in there. And if I had been contemplating buying a kind of two on the backside of his checklist, I might abandon the concept. However these 15 within the center? What about them?
For his half, Scott appreciated their lack of predictability.
“No one’s carried out this form of analysis. This could be the primary time we’re understanding that what issues for a tomato is completely different than what issues for a potato,” he stated. “Once you get these sorts of solutions in science, these are probably the most thrilling.”
So what is finest for a tomato?
I assumed he was going to generalize about blades, however as an alternative he stated the Wüsthof Amici, which, because of a very well-honed apex, simply sliced proper by way of.
