Not least because of the many TV cooking shows and the unmanageable variety of cookbooks, more and more women and men are discovering the fun of cooking. Many people like to prepare their food fresh and place great emphasis on high-quality ingredients from local producers. However, unprocessed ingredients make higher demands on the kitchen equipment. So should ambitious home cooks who buy their poultry fresh from the yard and meat at one go from the butcher, have good knives handy in the drawer. One of the most important knives is the so-called Boning ,

Long tradition

The Boning is not an invention of the modern kitchen. As early as the Middle Ages, cooks used the long blade to free meat and poultry from bones and tendons and prepare it for further processing. The most common came Boning with its up to 15 cm long blade when skinning game used. So the knife with the L-blade found in each one backpacka hunter. After killing, the hunters prepared the game and delivered the bone and sinew-free meat to the butcher’s shop. Here deer and wild boar were further divided and sold to the cooks.

Due to the long tradition of this knife type, different variants have developed over the centuries. Nowadays, many cooks come in Boning with a slim, about 13 to 16 cm long blade in L-shape preferred. In Japan, the so-called „gokujo“ has a long tradition, but a completely different form. It is in contrast to the western variant swinging. Rarely come Boning with a straight and wide blade for use. There are also differences in the hardness of the blade.

Soft or rigid blade?

Many chefs swear by the stringers on a flexible blade. It clings to the bones as it moves along a bone, thus facilitating the separation of the meat. Other chefs, on the other hand, would never use a flexible blade and will only resort to knives with rigid blades in the kitchen. Which of the two variants is better can not be answered flat-rate. It depends on the personal preferences of the chef. If you’ve never worked with a boning knife before, you should try both variations and stay with the one he works best with.

Which boning knife for the beginning?

Hobby cooks who want to free a piece of meat from bone and vision for the first time, do not have to come up with a professional boning knife. A good start is the boning knife Fibrox with a 15 cm long blade from the Swiss manufacturer Victorinox. A slightly longer blade (16 cm) offers the gourmet boning knife by Wüsthof. The handle made of high-quality plastic and triple-riveted handle scales provide the best grip when working with poultry, meat and game. After some practice, a higher quality boning knife from quality manufacturers such as Gemini or WMF is recommended. But the more expensive the knives are, the better they should be cared for.

The right care

Boning knives must always be kept sharp so they can perform their task well. Therefore, it is generally advisable to rinse the knives by hand and not to put them in the dishwasher. For re-sharpening it is recommended to use a sharpening steel or a sharpening rod made of ceramic. Whether the knife is sharp enough, cooks notice that they have little power to exert. The knife slides almost by itself through the meat. Once the knife has become blunt, only a professional ground grind helps. This should be done by a professional on one grinding machineor one grindstonerespectively. With Japanese knives, the care is a bit more complicated. They may only be sharpened with a stone or special equipment, otherwise there is a risk that the highly sensitive blade is permanently damaged.