All in Good Food

Hey everybody yeah I know I haven't been on for a while and I hope to change that soon. I've been trying out a lot of recipes and think I'll have a lot to post up for the new year. In the mean time I want to let you know about a contest that's going on for the month of December from the Better Made Snack Company in Detroit, Michigan.

I  look forward to seeing you all with some new posts in 2014.

Hi everyone as you all know I have been away for a short while. I just needed to take a short hiatus to recoup, reorganize, reenergize and regroup. I just wanted you to know that I am back and will continue to give you wonderful posts on recipes, bentos and tips.


Before my short hiatus I enter a contest held by Eric Ackerson @My Hungry Tum. I usually don’t enter contests but I really liked his blog and was fascinated by how it was written. The contest was to win a Bob Kramer Series Shun Utility Knife. I have to admit that I had never heard of the knife brand before but when I saw the photo of the knife I fell in love with it. I could tell that it was a high quality knife by the pattern you can see on the blade. That pattern is created by the forging of multiple layers of stainless steel together which creates a strong, flexible and sharp blade. You may ask where I learned something like this well I remembered seeing a program about how a Katana or “Samurai sword” is made and it uses a similar process. After entering the contest I decided to do a search on this knife to learn more about it and came a cross a video here.

I must say the performance of this knife is wonderful. As you can see the knife is cutting through the chicken like it was butter. I must however let you know that the chicken here has been slightly frozen to make it stiff enough to be able to cut thin slices. Note I learned this trick from watching the last The Next Food Network Star program. In one of the episodes Melissa d'Arabian used this technique to make chicken slices that where very thin. However I must tell you that I tried this same technique with my old knife with not so good results. Although my old knife is sharp and of good quality and it can cut slices of chicken breast just not as good. I found out from my research that keeping your blades honed is a necessary task. So I will be buying a honing tool to use for my old knives but for my Shun I will be sending that into the company to have them hone it for me.

As you can see in the photo above the slices were so thin you are able to clearly see the outline of the knife underneath the slice of chicken. As you can see in the photo below the slices came out beautifully.

This knife has become an intricate part of my cooking. Although I can use it for almost everything from cutting meat to cutting vegetables I don’t like to cross use my knives. So I am looking into buying more of the Shun brand knives for my various cooking needs.

However, I did try it out on vegetables before using it on my meat products and the results were just as wonderful. When I was creating my j-cation bento contest entry I used it to cut the red pepper I used to make various parts of my Maneki Neko. As you can see I was able to cut small then slices that were perfect for the paw.

I must say that winning this knife has been another step in my cooking education which I feel is a never ending process. I want to thank Eric @My Hungry Tum for having this contest. The world of the Shun knife has been introduced to me and I don’t think I can ever go back to the ordinary.