Cleaver facts for kids
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A cleaver is a large knife that looks a bit like a small hatchet with a rectangular blade. It's mostly used in kitchens or by butchers. Cleavers are great for splitting big pieces of soft bones and cutting through thick meat. You can also use the broad side of the knife to crush things like garlic. It's even handy for scooping up chopped food!
Tools similar to cleavers have been used for a very long time, going back to the Paleolithic period. This was a time when early humans used stone tools.
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How Cleavers Are Designed
Cleavers are different from other kitchen knives. They have a super tough edge. This edge is made to handle many strong hits directly into thick meat, tough cartilage, bones, and the cutting board.
To make them so strong, cleavers use a softer, tougher type of steel. They also have a thicker blade. If the steel were too hard or the blade too thin, it might break or bend when used roughly.
When you use a cleaver, you swing it like a hammer. The knife's design relies on its weight and your swing to cut efficiently. It chops straight through instead of slicing with a sawing motion. Because of this, the edge of a meat cleaver doesn't need to be super sharp. In fact, a very sharp edge isn't ideal for a cleaver. The cutting angle, called the grind, is much blunter than for other kitchen knives, usually around 25 degrees.
The tough metal and thick blade also make a cleaver perfect for crushing things with the side of the blade. Other thin, sharp knives might crack if you tried to do this.
Some cleavers have a small hole at the top corner. This is for hanging them on a wall. Butchers usually hang their cleavers. They don't lay them flat, as this can dull or damage the blade.
What Are Cleavers Used For?
Cleavers are mainly used to cut through thin or soft bones and tough tissues called sinew. For example, with a chicken, you can use a cleaver to chop through the bird's thin bones or separate its ribs.
Cleavers are also useful for preparing hard vegetables and other foods. Think of tough squash, where a thin slicing knife might break.
It's important to know that cleavers are not for cutting through solid, thick, and hard bones. For those, a special bone saw is used instead.
Cleavers Around the World
Chinese Cleavers
The Chinese chef's knife often looks like a cleaver because of its rectangular shape. However, these knives are much thinner. They are mostly used as general kitchen knives. People use them to slice boneless meats, chop vegetables, or flatten garlic. They can even act as a spatula to move chopped ingredients to a wok.
For heavier butchering tasks, there is a different, heavier Chinese cleaver. This one is used in a similar way to Western cleavers.
Japanese Cleavers
In Japanese cooking, the main cleaver used is the light-duty Deba bōchō. This knife is mostly used for cutting the heads off fish.
