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Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

seattleultrasonics.com

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Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#371

Post by kristjansson »

sublinear wrote: post #343
gurgeous wrote: post #278

I personally watched Scott spend years working on the project and obsessively iterating on the steel, the vibration pattern, the circuitry, the handle, and the form factor. Scott is a hacker, one of us for sure. I mean, the guy built a custom robot just to measure cutting efficiency... The knife is amazing and exactly as shown in the video. Rand Fishkin has a nice short on LinkedIn trying out the knife too. I think h…

Free idea: put this tech in a mandoline slicer. Even the best tend to struggle with consistency and can only go so thin due to all the friction. An ultrasonic mandoline that can overcome all that would probably fly off the shelves and better match the original industrial intent.

On one hand I would buy that instantly. On the other hand, it’s already missing small pieces thanks to my current mandolin. Not sure I want to make my scariest utensil scarier.

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#372

Post by ackfoobar »

saxonww wrote: post #351
ackfoobar wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone who cares about the cutting experience would put a knife into a dishwasher.

I'm not disputing that, and it's kind of my point. Most home cooks (I would bet millions) are not worrying about "the cutting experience" when they are making dinner. They are using a knife to cut up vegetables or slice meat or whatever. Then they are putting that knife in the dishwasher. Not all of them, but most. I think my other points matter more. I think people who are invested in the experience as you suggest c…

> Most home cooks (I would bet millions) are not worrying about "the cutting experience"

Indeed, and they won't buy the knife at this price anyway. My point is that not being dishwasher-safe does not matter for ~everyone. If they care, they won't do it; if they don't, they won't buy it.

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#373

Post by john_minsk »

temp0826 wrote: post #328
mckn1ght wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s where a lot of mess comes from, so I’m very interested in this tech. The worst are cucumbers, they stick to the blade and new slices pop them up and they roll everywhere. I get some better results by slightly angling the blade but it’s not perfect. The blade quality doesn’t look great but I think any decent cook that knows how to hone will do just fine with it. I’m not sure I’d spend the money and replace my e…

Maybe instead of building it into the knife, it needs to be something you could attach to any knife

Interesting idea, but I would say that it is orders of magnitude harder compared to having an integrated system. Vibration in such a compact space with a very sharp blade... I want this system be stable around me.

I would say, if this idea becomes popular, knife producers can create their own versions in the new models, or retrofit old knives at the shop.

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#374

Post by com2kid »

cush wrote: post #24

If you have a sharp knife and a wet cloth under your cutting board chopping is a joy, otherwise it's a dangerous, tedious, and exhausting task that turns so many people away from cooking entirely

My wood cutting board has rubber feet on the bottom. Seems like a much easier solution than handling a bunch of wet towels every day!

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#375

Post by com2kid »

peteforde wrote: post #336

I recently backed NeoBlade, which is an ultrasonic multi-blade cutting device for crafters. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hozodesign/neoblade TL;DR it's really freaking cool, though the blades do seem to get dull fairly quickly. That said, they are made of a radically different grade of steel. If the tech in the NeoBlade has been adapted successfully to the chef's knife, then all of the haters are going to sou…

I'm still in the camp that air fryers are stupid. A convection oven does literally the same thing.

Also, portable air fryers make such small servings that they're useless for people with families. What the hell I going to do with three chicken wings?

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#376

Post by bsder »

john_minsk wrote: post #360
DannyBee wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall agree it seems cool, and maybe interesting. "People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives," The former, totally agree - i've seen people buy a tormek to do basic knife sharpening (not grinding), which is like swatting a fly with an $800 hammer. The latter, do you mean overall, or in a sitting or what? I've certainly seen people on various forums go nuts, and then you have hertzman…

I admire you. You are a minority, you know that, right? I don't have time in my schedule at the moment, which says "sharpen the knifes". So for me - it would be amazing if someone solved this problem in a radical way. Sporadically I would sharpen the knives and since I don't have it in my "skills" section of the brain, I always have to "figure out" sharpening process.

> I always have to "figure out" sharpening process.

Get the Worksharp fixed angle sharpener for about $70 (about the price of 2 decent stones). If you're really interested, get the leather strop add on for about $10. Get on with sharpening your kitchen knives. Put it in your closet until next year.

Is it "great"? No. If you want to be a knife nerd, it's not for you.

If you have a couple of kitchen knives you need to sharpen once a year, it's absolutely fine. And you don't have to "get the feel" of sharpening again before you can get sharp kinves.

Even with the stones and equipment I have, it is way more mindless and a lot less messy to simply use a fixed-angle sharpener. Sure, you won't get "The Ultimate Hair Whittling Edge(tm)", but your knives will quite readily Julienne your vegetables.

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#377

Post by kristjansson »

wisty wrote: post #246

Why is it people here seem so unusually sceptical? It's expensive (but not really, only compared to knives - a $500 GPU isn't expensive). It's probably mostly good in certain niches and using a $10 knife that's sharpened properly is probably 95% as good in almost every application, and using a $10 knife that is only reasonably well sharpened is probably 90% as good. Slicing stuff for hotpot or yakiniku or Korean BBQ…

$500 isn’t even out of the question for a great knife, it feels like about the right price point for the product.

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#378

Post by DannyBee »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #122
oakwhiz wrote: post #83

Honest question, does it aerosolize pathogens that cause food-borne illness?

That's good point, aerosolized raw chicken meat water doesn't sound like a good time.

Good news - ~all food borne pathogens are much denser than air. Not like slightly, about 1000x denser.

You are going to have about as much aerosolized raw chicken meat water (ARCMW) whether you use an ultrasonic knife or not.

The ARCMW touched by the ultrasonic knife will probably have significantly less alive bacteria than the stuff touched by the regular knife.

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#379

Post by DannyBee »

tcoff91 wrote: post #152
oakwhiz wrote: post #83

Honest question, does it aerosolize pathogens that cause food-borne illness?

Great question. It does seem like you would not want to use it for raw chicken.

As far as i can know, the science does not support this answer :) In fact, it is probably the opposite - you should definitely use it on raw chicken.

Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife

#380

Post by com2kid »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22

Don't buy dumb electronic kitchen gadgets. Get a good steel knife, learn how to sharpen it properly, and you're set for life.

The entire argument in the thread about how to best sharpen a knife is why people don't bother learning how to sharpen knives.

Like holy shit, I'm just going to pay someone a few dollars to do it because I don't want to bother sorting out all of the contradictory advice!

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