While I think this is neat, I doubt the added complexity of the device, extra space required for storage of charger and the chore of charging it are worth the benefit of a slightly better, easier slice. Might be nice for people with certain disabilities though.
I think it would be fine as u would need a lot less knives so one bespoke one with a charger wouldn’t be that big of a deal
Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
361–370 of 697 posts
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#362This is the best demo video ever! Congrats on reinventing the knife!
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#363Elsewhere on the thread I pointed out that I'd noticed the video doesn't show anybody doing actual prep; making an easy but deliberate thin slice of a tomato is one thing, quickly dicing an onion or a bell pepper is a very different thing. To that observation I'd add (h/t my Slack friends) this interesting site Seattle Ultrasonics stood up: https://seattleultrasonics.com/pages/knife-database One thing I notice here i…
A talented chef might cut vegetables at 25hz, while the blade is moving at 44khz. So whatever cutting improvement is conferred by the ultrasonic tech will certainly be applied towards fast cutting. It seems that the main benefit for fast cutting would be that food doesn't stick to the blade. I'll cut bread with my chef's knife (amazon shun knockoff) when I want to make less of a mess. One interesting thing I noticed…
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#364I'm a bit surprised to see how much snark there is in the comment sections of this video. The requests for "let's see an independent chef use this knife to do real kitchen work" make total sense, but the moralizing around e-waste and losing fingers etc feels off balance. People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives, of course there's a viable market for sharper kitchen knives. And for e-w…
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…
So far, I mostly sharpen my knives on the back of a plate. So definitely could be doing more :)
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#365Elsewhere on the thread I pointed out that I'd noticed the video doesn't show anybody doing actual prep; making an easy but deliberate thin slice of a tomato is one thing, quickly dicing an onion or a bell pepper is a very different thing. To that observation I'd add (h/t my Slack friends) this interesting site Seattle Ultrasonics stood up: https://seattleultrasonics.com/pages/knife-database One thing I notice here i…
A talented chef might cut vegetables at 25hz, while the blade is moving at 44khz. So whatever cutting improvement is conferred by the ultrasonic tech will certainly be applied towards fast cutting. It seems that the main benefit for fast cutting would be that food doesn't stick to the blade. I'll cut bread with my chef's knife (amazon shun knockoff) when I want to make less of a mess. One interesting thing I noticed…
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#366I'm a bit surprised to see how much snark there is in the comment sections of this video. The requests for "let's see an independent chef use this knife to do real kitchen work" make total sense, but the moralizing around e-waste and losing fingers etc feels off balance. People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives, of course there's a viable market for sharper kitchen knives. And for e-w…
>People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives... What amazes me is how many people spend absolutely zero time sharpening knives, using decades-old knives that have never been sharpened and can't even cut through cucumbers.
She never said anything, I didn't know it. Why?
Because she is just "used" to it and to her these knives were just fine. So she never thought about sharpening knives in the first place.
I will take those knives to a pro and he will sharpen them for me, as in a rental I stay in, I don't have the tools to do that and as I said in another comment - I don't have a pain free process to do that as I don't do it often.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#367Elsewhere on the thread I pointed out that I'd noticed the video doesn't show anybody doing actual prep; making an easy but deliberate thin slice of a tomato is one thing, quickly dicing an onion or a bell pepper is a very different thing. To that observation I'd add (h/t my Slack friends) this interesting site Seattle Ultrasonics stood up: https://seattleultrasonics.com/pages/knife-database One thing I notice here i…
Nobody uses a chef's knife to cut cheese?
Ditto for bread knives.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#368If you're an amateur and really want to spend this much money, get a good enough knife (e.g. the classic victorinox) and a chef's choice electric sharpener, and you won't have any more issues.
A few YT knife channels have done deep dives showing why they stop working soon after purchase, the details escape me but I have to agree with the end result....
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sixteenth notes in "Crazy Train"[1] are nominally 552 per minute, or 9.2 Hz. Moving a knife at 10 Hz is probably very difficult. I would expect 2-3 Hz is a normal pace for a skilled knife user and 4-5 Hz is showing off. 1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tMDFv5m18Pw#t=0m32s
Cerebellar oscillation (in the inferior olive) gate motor control interrupt speed and are generally limited to ~10 Hz in humans.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#370Honest question, does it aerosolize pathogens that cause food-borne illness?
First - ~all food illness causing bacteria is denser than air. about 1000x denser. On its own, it won't float.
Second - almost all cutting motions are still going to throw it around. So you are already doing this when you cut or chop food. You are slicing cell walls, etc, releasing pathogens that exist inside. But it doesn't like aerosolize in the sense of floating around, because it's denser than air[1]. How far it goes depends on the cutting motion, etc.
Third - does ultrasonic make it better or worse - well, again, it doesn't overall float, so it's really a question of does it do anything to make go farther/less far, and does it do anything to destroy or the opposite?
44khz (used here) is a common ultrasonic frequency in cleaning[2] and leak detection.
In fact, it's also used to remove bacterial cells from surfaces at higher intensities (and detect them at lower intensities). It's actually one of the major ways non-heat pasteurization is done.
While it's not 100% at removing individual bacterial cells, even at super high intensity, ultrasonic frequencies are both detrimental to cell growth, and as used here, will cause lots and lots of bacterial death because of everything from cavitation to pressure changes to instantaneous heat to you name it.
Does it fling pathogens any further? Maybe? I'm sure there are some situations in which it will. But they don't seem normal. Like if you are just slicing raw meat or chicken, it's hard to see how it could do that.
Overall, it probably helps more than it hurts. As far as i can tell, it's not even a close question.
[1] It is possible to get the bacteria to float in air anyway due to brownian motion and other mechanisms, but it still seems overblown - the percent of food borne illness caused by inhaling bacteria vs eating underprepared food it is so small they don't even bother to track it. This knife is not going to change that.
[2] If you google it, you will also discover it's emitted by fearful rats. I don't know if the knife also scares rats away.