Making the case for the little-known filleting knife

Cooks like to show off their scars and burns as if they are rehearsing the scene between Quint and Hooper from Jaws. As a chef, it's inevitable that a nasty knife wound will occur, but gruesome wounds seem to garner a little respect, as long as it doesn't hamper your ability to keep working. I still pride myself on a cut I made a few months after getting married in 2006: slicing through my thumb nail like it was butter with a brand-new santoku, a wedding gift from a friend. Afterwards, my wife refused to touch the "cursed" blade, for fear it would turn on her next.

A good chef can minimize these wounds, especially with the right equipment. For the minimalist and the frugal, the chef's knife can pretty accomplish any slicing task, much like a good golfer can play a nice 18 holes with nothing more than a putter and a driver and maybe a 9-iron (a paring knife and bread knife are pretty useful, too).

However, when it comes to butchering once-living beings--in particular, fish--I've found that one other tool is indispensible: the filleting knife. Because it's flexible, it can bend to cut along the rib cage of both flat and round fish fairly well. I find it almost impossible to carve fillets out of a flounder or other flat fish without a filleting knife; as an experiment, I tried using my boning knife, and ended up with scraps. I also watched as an assistant manager at my local grocer tried to eviscerate a flat fish for me. He also used what looked like a rigid boning knife, and ended up giving me three-fourths of a fish, destroying one whole side of the bottom fillet. Strangely, I received no discount for the mutilated remains.

By using a flexible knife, you can bend it upwards towards yourself as you scrape along the ribcage, pulling the fillet away from the backbone. I've also found it pretty useful for cutting up chickens. Meat, you probably need something sturdier. And if you're properly able to fillet a whole fish, you can carve yourself some nice fillets while making some great fish stock (only takes an hour to cook, as opposed to chicken and veal, which can take all day).

And let's be honest, it's really cool to lay out a bunch of knives on a cutting board next to your halibut, preparing to play carve up that big-mouthed bastard.