-Why do butchers use teeth with no knives to cut animals but steak knives have serrations.

Question

I noticed in a breakdown video while butchering a cow. Is it due to fibers being more stringy after being cooked? My other thought is the temperature of the meat.

In: Other

Answer 1

Think about other blades that are always serrated–steak knives, bread knives, saw blades (for cutting wood or metal). The reason for the serrations is to introduce a horizontal component to your force, making it easier to cut through the material as you move back and forth through it. The serrations rip into the material, tearing as well as slicing it. A straight blade relies almost entirely on vertical downward force and would require more effort in general. Imagine cutting through the crust of bread with a straight blade… you’d end up squashing your bread. The serrations allow you exert very little downward force and still quickly cut through the material. You do however end up with more of a mess from the crumbs that it rips off the bread.

Also, we typically use them while seated whereas the butcher is standing over his cuts. When seated, it is harder to create the needed downward force to cut through something.

So why do we use a serrated blade for steaks but not raw? The reason why steaks are harder to cut through is because the meat is cooked. The proteins in the meat have denatured and become tougher as a result, so the serrated knife allows you to saw through it.

Also, as one user already mentioned, the straight blade makes a prettier slice which is because it doesn’t rip into the material.

And the serrated knife has the advantage of a blade that is mostly protected from being dulled on the plate because it is arched up. The only part that touches the plate are the little pointed tips of the serration, which is a small fraction of the blade, since the length of each tip is probably on the order of a hundred, maybe less, microns. For a 8 inch blade, that would be about 200mm or 200,000 μm. If there are about 12 points per in, that’s 100 points about. If each point has a distance of 100 μm (a hair is like 80 microns on average, I think), that’s 10,000μm total, and 8,000/200,000 is 5% of the blade. So 95% of the blade is never touching the plate. That’s pretty damn good if you want it to stay sharp.