- Hey everyone.
Obviously I'm not David C. Anderson,
I'm one of the producers that puts his videos together.
I'm also not in the office right now, I'm on my vacation.
But before I left David handed me a knife and asked me
to put it through its paces,
see how it is with kitchen prep.
Funny.
Now some of you are already familiar with this behemoth,
it's the Cold Steel Chaos Kukri.
Now I'm not entirely sure what David had in mind when I told
him that I was visiting a cabin in the woods by a lake.
But while there is plenty of nature around me I do have
access to a grill, a refrigerator and a grocery store.
Not exactly roughing it out here,
this is a pretty relaxing place.
While I'm here though and I've already got the cameras I
might as well give it a shot.
I've already done my grocery run so I've got some steak for
the grill a little chicken for a salad
and a bit of produce here.
Now I have a background in a couple different restaurants
over the years, working with several different chefs.
But that does not make me a chef myself so don't mistake
anything I do today for any kind of culinary expertise,
let alone kitchen safety.
I mean this is a Kukri I'm working with after all.
Now chef or no chef I do know a good first step to food
safety is to start with our vegetables.
So I got some romaine lettuce here.
I'm not going for anything fancy,
this is mostly gonna be just a place for
the chicken to lay on.
And honestly that's worked pretty well,
there's a lot of belly here that I can play with.
Its still got a pretty reasonable edge even though
someone once used this to hack down a tree.
I mentioned some beef earlier and it's hard to think of a
better friend to steak than potatoes.
Now I could bake these pretty easily but that wouldn't
really show off the knife,
so I got something else in mind.
This recurve section actually does a
pretty good job of skinning these.
But frankly I'm gonna be here all day so I'm gonna
cheat and use a vegetable peeler.
Now let's get to slicing and this is,
this feels so awkward,
something this big.
What I'm running into is the shape of this blade means the
finger guards here aren't gonna let me
(bangs knife)
cut anything flat.
But if I kinda back it off a little bit.
It's pretty awkward having the blade,
the handle so far out back.
Then your cutting is so far away.
Actually.
You know what I think I may have found a technique here.
You see these rocking cuts work pretty well too.
It's just
so long and awkward.
If I was cutting a slightly softer vegetable this little
draw motion would probably be easier.
Cause I can use the weight of the blade to do most
of the work for me.
Well that was a bit crude and imprecise
but no less effective.
These potatoes are probably gonna be pretty lonesome by
themselves so let's get an onion in there.
See I can use these recurve section to
break through that first skin.
Here's where a smaller knife would do a better job.
I'm actually having some trouble getting through because
this blade is so thick.
And now I think like the potatoes I'm
able to use this draw motion.
Little olive oil on some foil.
Onions on there.
And a little more oil in there.
So far I've been making some pretty big cuts,
that would be a bit of a job for a pairing knife
but nothing for a chef's knife.
Well what if we went small.
I've got some garlic here I wanna use to make a marinade.
Let's see how this does at mincing.
There's of course (murmurs) trick of peeling garlic right.
And this big blade actually does a pretty good job of that.
Now this part I had to be really concerned,
so what I'm a do, I'm gonna grab a little close to see if
that helps out with anything.
I can't say this is the best idea I've ever had.
Even reaching out forward I got so much weight behind me
that I'm having to fight it and it just doesn't get
you in a good rhythm for chopping small stuff.
Even here with this rosemary,
which I'm gonna spread on our chicken once it's ready,
this is really awkward.
So not recommended, get a smaller knife.
Before I got much further I'm actually
gonna rinse off the Kukri.
This is a carbon steel blade so corrosion's an issue but
its got this black coating on there which will help it.
I'm mostly worried that exposed edge there.
This is where it gets a little tricky cause I
don't have that fine control.
I'm not really trimming this fat,
I'm more scraping it really.
Those guys out, get a little rosemary on there.
And I'm actually gonna lay these out for later cause we're
not firing up the grill just yet.
Now moving on to our steak and I didn't want to buy a lot.
So I just bought some strip steak.
It's already pretty much prepared for me,
there's not a lot for the knife to do except maybe
cut open the package.
Of course now that I'm looking at this knife,
this handle though if I reverse my grip,
could be a meat tenderizer.
No, no, no I'm not doing that.
That's a dumb idea.
Throw these in a bag,
get our garlic in there as well.
And I'm not going for any specific recipe
I'm just kind of faking a marinade.
This is about the knife, not the recipe.
Now I've come to the part of the equation
where heat is involved.
Got the grill out here and it's a little dirty actually,
but I am noticing that this pommel right here looks like
it would be perfect for scraping everything off.
Okay so perfect is a bit of a stretch,
you were really better off using a wire brush but you know,
that'll work pretty well for cracking an egg.
Our grills nice and hot,
let's get our potatoes on there.
Start laying out some chicken.
Not a lot of space on this grill but we'll make due.
This is working out pretty well actually.
Okay so I don't have the best dexterity with this.
Probably easier to just use these.
These cooked pretty well actually.
All right let's get these guys off of there.
And I'm a big fan of marinading stuff in bags,
it's a little easier to get full coverage.
Whoa, I'm liking this.
Yeah I definitely chopped too much garlic for this operation
but I'm the one eating it, I like garlic.
All right I'd say we're just about done here.
Taking a peak at our potatoes and I believe they're done
so just gonna lay them on top of the Kukri like that.
Carry them inside.
Our potatoes have cooled down a little bit on my walk in,
so I can just unwrap this.
And I'll slide all our potatoes in there.
Now let's get our chicken ready for this salad.
Yeah but then again it is such a big knife,
it's not so great at slicing protein but you do got,
kinda get to crush down on it.
Now let's get to our final plating.
Got our romaine lettuce from earlier.
Just gonna get some, throw chicken right on there.
Like I said, I'm not being fancy with my salads.
I never am really,
this is just a nice place for chicken to sit.
Get our steak right there.
Get some potatoes cause I like starch.
And of course in my opinion no plate really feels complete
unless you got some bread on there.
And we've got one last party trick.
This is actually an excellent spreader for butter.
So the Kukri did a fair bit better than I expected.
In my personal opinion if this was all you had,
it can do you in a pinch.
But quite honestly with so many kitchen knives being out
there for the express purpose of food preparation,
I can't recommend this for daily kitchen use.
It's really just too big for everyday kitchen uses and too
thick to be an effective slicer.
But if you wanted to use this for cooking,
best I can recommend is as a machete.
Go out and find some green sticks for roasting
over an open flame.
There's a lot to be said about the Chaos Kukri through that
is good, it's got a lot of reach, strong steel,
this handles actually incredibly comfortable.
It does a good job of protecting your fingers,
and this knife has a lot of uses just not in the kitchen.
If you wanna get your hands on one of these click the
link in the description to head
on over to knifecenter.com.
But if you plan on cooking,
do yourself a favor and check out our
wide selection of kitchen knives.
You'll table guest will thank you.
- [Cameraman] Can you put that away now?
- Nope.
But before I left I need the knife.
It's the food channel featuring Knife Center.
Don't let your voice crack.
(laughing)
Sound like a prepubescent.
I didn't plug in my mic.