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Switched from a 10 inch breaking knife to a 6 inch curved boning knife on pork shoulders and my yield went up 4 percent
I've been breaking down pork shoulders at my shop in Sacramento for about 6 years now and always used a 10 inch straight breaking knife for the whole job. Two months ago the handle cracked on it and I grabbed a 6 inch curved boning knife out of the drawer just to finish the last two shoulders of the day. The difference in how clean I could get around the blade bone and the money muscle was night and day. I weighed my trim bucket for a week after that and I was pulling about 4 percent more usable meat off each shoulder, which on 40 shoulders a week adds up fast. I mean maybe it's just me but the shorter curved blade lets me roll around the joints way better without nicking the good stuff. Has anyone else made the switch to a shorter boning knife for shoulder work or am I late to this party?
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brookeellis10d ago
That 4 percent number doesn't surprise me at all. There's a pattern I keep running into in all kinds of work, where the tool everyone starts with is built for the big obvious job, and the smaller, more shaped tool is what actually gets the details right. Think about a big paint roller vs a trim brush, or a wide spatula vs a thin one for getting under a fish. The big one covers ground fast, the small one gets all the stuff you'd otherwise leave behind. Most people never switch because the big tool works, and it works well enough that you don't question it. Then one day something breaks or you grab the wrong thing out of habit and suddenly you see what you've been missing for years. Your cracked handle might have just paid for itself.
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