By Dylan Clay
Chef knives are designed to be versatile; They can chop vegetables, slice fruits, mince herbs, and even trim or slice retail cuts of meat.
A Butcher knife is designed to break down and process animals.
Chef = A person performing common “knife tasks” in a kitchen.
Butcher = A person who processes whole animals into primal, subprimal, and retail cuts.
To preface: It’s important to note that all knife brands are different.
They’ll have standardized lengths but things like materials and manufacturing processes are different.
My knives are Victorinox Fibrox.
The blade shape of the Chef knife and Butcher knife are completely different.
The Chef’s knife has a cutting edge that features a rounded taper with a sloping edge.
This taper allows for the characteristic rocking motion that makes chopping and slicing efficient.
When using a cutting board, the tapered portion of the blade is kept in-contact and then the knife is rocked towards the heel.
The blade also comes to a point/tip that allows for precision cutting when necessary.
A Butcher’s knife has a straight edge like you’d find on a slicing knife that then comes to an upswept belly that you’d find on a skinning knife.
This curve is useful for dressing an animal carcass and allows the hide to be removed without puncturing it. It also allows the Butcher to maneuver around bones.
The length of the blade allows for the Butcher to create clean slices and makes trimming easier.
While materials differ (meaning weight differs), typically a Butcher knife is thicker than a Chef’s knife.
Here’s the thickness of the blades next to each other:
This thickness means that Butcher knives typically weigh more than Chef knives.
Here’s the weight of my Father’s Butcher knife:
Here’s the weight of my Chef’s knife:
Again, both are made by the Victorinox brand and feature their Fibrox handles.
The Butcher’s knife weighs 48.3 grams more than the Chef’s knife.
As I hope is evident from the above, you technically could.
Often, the reason “secondary” or “specialized” knives are used by Chef’s or even Individuals at home is because they tend to perform certain tasks better.
For instance, you could peel an apple with a Chef’s knife but 8″ or 10″ of knife is a lot of knife for this task. Rather, a paring knife is a much smaller knife (2.5″ – 4″) and is designed for that purpose, ie. peeling the skin of fruits.
Say you’re a Baker or someone who makes a lot of homemade bread.
While you could certainly slice the bread with a chef’s knife, a bread knife is designed to cut through bread via the serrated edge.
Another good example is a Butcher’s knife; A knife designed to take on the the tasks of a butcher.
You get the gist.
Secondary and specialized knives are designed to fit your individual needs and to make certain tasks easier.
Not all Butcher’s Reach for the same knife.
But, one that is most commonly labeled is as pictured below:
These knives take qualities from a number of different knives:
All of these qualities create a knife that Butcher’s can use throughout the processing of an animal – as apposed to reaching for different knives for different tasks.
Technically a “butcher” knife is whatever the individual Butcher prefers to use.
The above is just the “traditional” or “English variant” as some tradespeople might call it.
When most people hear the term “Butcher knife” they almost instantly think of the Cleaver.
This is due large in-part to mainstream media associating a butcher-like caricature with the knife.
While Butcher’s do use cleavers – they’re often not using it as their Butcher Knife.
Cleavers aren’t really used to cleave through large bone; That task is better left to a bone saw or bandsaw. Rather, cleavers work well for small game like poultry.
Personally, when it comes to breaking down chickens, I pretty much only use a cleaver.
Cleavers can also work especially well for fish.
