I’ve wondered the same as OP and never saw one in real life.
Probably it’s a regional thing, like how in some countries (as I recently discovered) they don’t know what a cheese slicer is and just butcher cheese with a knife.
I still use this joke any time rocks or size comes up in conversation but it’s so old that nobody ever gets it and they just look at me like I had a stroke.
Fools, the lot of you. I leave my cheese on the rocky shores of Ol’ Merry Bertha near the concrete jetties of man. There, the sweet mother deep slices my cheese with her sharp, salty caress, leaving my belly full and satisfied.
The texture and flavour of a hard cheese cut with a cheese slicer is different from when one cuts with a knife. I like both but on a sandwich the cheese slicer wins every time.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’ve eaten both, side by side, because it’s a really interesting difference. A cheese slicer makes a wafer thin piece of cheese that I cannot replicate with a knife. It is not a skill issue either. A chainsaw and a fretsaw produce different results, regardless of the skill of the user.
However you’ve decided that your reckoning is better than my experience, which is astonishingly arrogant.
Cutting the type of cheese you use a slicer on, with a knife, compresses the cheese more. Young cheese is solid, but too fatty and soft to really easily slice through. You can ofcourse, but the quality of your slice will not be similar to the easily and reproducible quality you get with a slicer. Especially if you need many slices.
“Instead of getting the tool designed specifically for the thing, just get a different tool that isn’t designed for the thing, and then learn to make really precise difficult cuts!”
I come from a big cheese area, and genuinely, no. A sharper knife isn’t the problem, the surface area of the blade is the problem. Even an oiled ceramic knife doesn’t cut cleanly through many cheeses (ceramic is extremely sharp, oiling is to attempt to prevent buckling and breaking because the cheese sticks to the blade). A wire cheese slicer is consistent, and safe and easy enough for a child to use (I know because that was my first experience with one, around 5-6).
No. There’s different types of tools for different types of cheese. Don’t get one if you only need it once. But a good slicer is as cheap as a decent short kitchen knife (€10).
I understand the tool, we used to have one when I was younger. I’m just saying that a knife will do zero compression if the edge is properly sharp. Most people use knives that go dull quickly and never bother to sharpen them, but a good sharp knife is a game changer for any type of food prep.
A cheese slicer is just a convenience thing like an apple slicer.
I mostly use a mandolin for the same purpose anyways, but a mandolin is just the convenience of a sharp knife with more consistent uniformity.
Whilst my knife is unlikely to be sharp enough, I don’t have the hand skills to shave a 0.6mm wafer of cheddar off a block even with the best knife. My fine motor skills are excellent and I’m a professional miniature sculptor and have particular preferences on which specific scalpel blades I like to work with! My point being that I have significantly above average skills and that’s not sufficient.
If you happen to have the tools and skill to shave cheese that way, fantastic, well done you, but that’s an extremely uncommon set of circumstances. As you say, most people’s knives aren’t up to the task. Meanwhile even a child can use a cheese slicer to get a decent slice off a block.
I love the effort of actually breaking out the calipers, sincerely gave me a chuckle!
Don’t get me wrong, no kitchen gizmo is useless if it gets the utility you need from it! If it’s something you use often, that’s worth it.
I just generally try to live by the idea that less is more, so I try to prioritize the things I use more often and find additional uses for things I already have instead of buying something new. For me it’s just that having a good kitchen knife provides a lot of inherent utility, and for someone who doesn’t need to slice cheese very often, it falls into the “good enough” niche.
But I’ve been in way too many home kitchens where they have 10 drawers full of all sorts of implements and gadgets that do exactly one thing and seemed neat when they bought it, yet they never get used more than once a year or two. We incur an environmental debt with most every product we buy, and that’s a lot of plastic and scrap metal waste that will need to be dealt with someday.
Whilst that’s perfectly sensible, our household has at least two cheese slicers in case one is in the dishwasher. They’re very common in Swedish households!
Of course you had to be Dutch. I swear, all my Dutch friends have like 3 of those an a couple of those electric grills with mini pans for melting cheese below
In all fairness, the slicer isn’t even useful for all cheeses. It’s convenient for Edam and similar ones though.
The cheese slicer is a great Norwegian invention and much used in all the Nordics. And The Netherlands. And Germany?
I think it mostly boils down to “what is cheese” to you. If you think you can even have an argument about whether you should cut “cheese” with a cheese slicer, then you come from a place where they make sense.
In my fridge I’ve got parmigiano, gorgonzola dolce and I just finished a rare piece of emmenthal. A slicer would have been useful only with the last one of those.
But my sandwiches! I hear all my fellow northerners cry. They’re great with brie or toma. No slicer needed.
I’ve wondered the same as OP and never saw one in real life.
Probably it’s a regional thing, like how in some countries (as I recently discovered) they don’t know what a cheese slicer is and just butcher cheese with a knife.
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Why would you use a knife when you can cut anything with a spoon, if you give it a bit of force?
Why would you a spoon, when you can use a spork? It is the ultimate utensil.
You fancy people, I use rock, rock never fail.
Biggest rock is best rock.
I still use this joke any time rocks or size comes up in conversation but it’s so old that nobody ever gets it and they just look at me like I had a stroke.
Edit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i_APoSfCYwU
I for one hadn’t seen that until now. It was funny. New joke is best joke.
Fools, the lot of you. I leave my cheese on the rocky shores of Ol’ Merry Bertha near the concrete jetties of man. There, the sweet mother deep slices my cheese with her sharp, salty caress, leaving my belly full and satisfied.
We all have knives built into our mouths, we could just be using those!
I prefer the spife
Hands off my knorks!
The texture and flavour of a hard cheese cut with a cheese slicer is different from when one cuts with a knife. I like both but on a sandwich the cheese slicer wins every time.
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The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’ve eaten both, side by side, because it’s a really interesting difference. A cheese slicer makes a wafer thin piece of cheese that I cannot replicate with a knife. It is not a skill issue either. A chainsaw and a fretsaw produce different results, regardless of the skill of the user.
However you’ve decided that your reckoning is better than my experience, which is astonishingly arrogant.
Cutting the type of cheese you use a slicer on, with a knife, compresses the cheese more. Young cheese is solid, but too fatty and soft to really easily slice through. You can ofcourse, but the quality of your slice will not be similar to the easily and reproducible quality you get with a slicer. Especially if you need many slices.
Might just need a sharper knife, then.
“Instead of getting the tool designed specifically for the thing, just get a different tool that isn’t designed for the thing, and then learn to make really precise difficult cuts!”
I come from a big cheese area, and genuinely, no. A sharper knife isn’t the problem, the surface area of the blade is the problem. Even an oiled ceramic knife doesn’t cut cleanly through many cheeses (ceramic is extremely sharp, oiling is to attempt to prevent buckling and breaking because the cheese sticks to the blade). A wire cheese slicer is consistent, and safe and easy enough for a child to use (I know because that was my first experience with one, around 5-6).
No. There’s different types of tools for different types of cheese. Don’t get one if you only need it once. But a good slicer is as cheap as a decent short kitchen knife (€10).
Nope. The tools work very differently. It’s essentially a woodplane for cheese.
I understand the tool, we used to have one when I was younger. I’m just saying that a knife will do zero compression if the edge is properly sharp. Most people use knives that go dull quickly and never bother to sharpen them, but a good sharp knife is a game changer for any type of food prep.
A cheese slicer is just a convenience thing like an apple slicer.
I mostly use a mandolin for the same purpose anyways, but a mandolin is just the convenience of a sharp knife with more consistent uniformity.
Whilst my knife is unlikely to be sharp enough, I don’t have the hand skills to shave a 0.6mm wafer of cheddar off a block even with the best knife. My fine motor skills are excellent and I’m a professional miniature sculptor and have particular preferences on which specific scalpel blades I like to work with! My point being that I have significantly above average skills and that’s not sufficient.
If you happen to have the tools and skill to shave cheese that way, fantastic, well done you, but that’s an extremely uncommon set of circumstances. As you say, most people’s knives aren’t up to the task. Meanwhile even a child can use a cheese slicer to get a decent slice off a block.
…and yes, I did go and grab some calipers to check because I’m tired of this insane discussion. If you feel they’re a useless kitchen gizmo, cool, but lots of us love our cheese slicers because they’re tremendously useful and accessible.
I love the effort of actually breaking out the calipers, sincerely gave me a chuckle!
Don’t get me wrong, no kitchen gizmo is useless if it gets the utility you need from it! If it’s something you use often, that’s worth it.
I just generally try to live by the idea that less is more, so I try to prioritize the things I use more often and find additional uses for things I already have instead of buying something new. For me it’s just that having a good kitchen knife provides a lot of inherent utility, and for someone who doesn’t need to slice cheese very often, it falls into the “good enough” niche.
But I’ve been in way too many home kitchens where they have 10 drawers full of all sorts of implements and gadgets that do exactly one thing and seemed neat when they bought it, yet they never get used more than once a year or two. We incur an environmental debt with most every product we buy, and that’s a lot of plastic and scrap metal waste that will need to be dealt with someday.
Whilst that’s perfectly sensible, our household has at least two cheese slicers in case one is in the dishwasher. They’re very common in Swedish households!
People are pretty handy if they can make those long and thin slices of softer cheese with a knife
Lol you can’t even get close to that thickness with a knife
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Are you saying you think a cheese slicer does 3mm slices and therefore knife cuts are comparable?
Of course you had to be Dutch. I swear, all my Dutch friends have like 3 of those an a couple of those electric grills with mini pans for melting cheese below
In all fairness, the slicer isn’t even useful for all cheeses. It’s convenient for Edam and similar ones though.
The cheese slicer is a great Norwegian invention and much used in all the Nordics. And The Netherlands. And Germany?
I think it mostly boils down to “what is cheese” to you. If you think you can even have an argument about whether you should cut “cheese” with a cheese slicer, then you come from a place where they make sense.
In my fridge I’ve got parmigiano, gorgonzola dolce and I just finished a rare piece of emmenthal. A slicer would have been useful only with the last one of those.
But my sandwiches! I hear all my fellow northerners cry. They’re great with brie or toma. No slicer needed.
Is it? Where do you live? I’m in California in the US.