Your suggestions for cutting through bone?

[kikiandlala]

The '44s has plenty of talented cooks, and I'm wondering if any of you guys
can help me with the following.

I've got rather shaky hands and so I can't really use that big-ass Chinese
cleaver, you see butchers use. However I can't find anything that's
capable of going through bone really well. I had a pair of sharp cooking
scissors that was great for meat and so I decided to test on a chicken
drumstick, thinking that chicken bone isn't very dense and this particular
bone is quite thin too.

Big mistake, the bone rotated alot and so I wasn't able to focus on a specific
spot. The scissors may have a nice German steel blade but the handle was
cheap plastic and that snapped a bit. The damage wasn't anything that a
dab of crazy glue couldn't fix, but after that I had to rip the chicken bones
out of the sockets in order to get decent portions.

So what would be good for cutting/smashing through bone? I'm tempted to
get a hammer and chisel for the next time or one of those mountaineer picks.

[ZhuBaJie]

that's a good question actually. personally i use the big ass Chinese cleaver. but what do white people use? do they also use the big ass Chinese cleaver?

and you're just talking about chicken bones, right?

[ellencho]

You definitely need something with a sharp edge, but also heavy, so in this case, a big heavy cleaver would be perfect. I wouldn't even use a chef's knife, it just doesn't have the power to cut through and you'd just end up dulling your blade.

If you do try to smash through the bone with some sort of blunt heavy item, just be careful of bone shards in your food.

[ellencho]

If you do feel brave enough to try the cleaver, make sure your cutting board won't shift as you chop your bones. Something that helps is a very slightly damp towel underneath the cutting board.

Chopping through the meat properly and with as little bone splinters as possible is all about conviction and confidence. One good decisive blow should be enough.

[jaehwan]

Shaky hands doesn't make as much of a difference as being confident. Be careful and watch your fingers, but let that knife fly. Put your whole body into it. Just keep practicing, and you should be able to do it with one clean chop.

[nightshade]

For some reason, when I read the thread of this title I thought, "Dude, some 44 is disposing of human body parts."

Yeah, I think I'm too into the Natsuo Kirino novel, Out.

[jaehwan]

For some reason, when I read the thread of this title I thought, "Dude, some 44 is disposing of human body parts."


Haha! If it were maogirl or kimtae asking this question, I would've been too squeamish to even read it.

[minbo]

What do you need to cut through chicken bone for? If you are carving up a carcass to fit into stock pot for broth, then kitchen shears and a large chef's knife should be sufficient, no need to be neat, no need for precise cuts.

For anything carcass you can bring into a kitchen without a wheelbarrow, the tactic is to cut through the joints instead of through the bone. I can't think of any other reason to cut through bone in a regular kitchen unless you are butchering a large mammal carcasses, or if you are serving marrow. In that case go for the hand tool that butchers, hunters, taxidermists, and surgeons use. A good hack saw or bone saw.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=bone+saw&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=1145360561&ref=pd_sl_26nqhs55s1_e

[ZhuBaJie]

I can't think of any other reason to cut through bone in a regular kitchen unless you are butchering a large mammal carcasses, or if you are serving marrow.

a lot of Chinese dishes require you cut through bone, not just at the joints. because the food is usually cut into bite sized pieces.

[minbo]

True, but all the dishes that I 've had, aside from the tiny little riblets, usually the meat has been separated from the bone and chopped up.

Something else you can try, if you scribe a line around the bone with a knife and you wack it with a tenderizer hammer, you can get some bones to snap in half.

[kimtae]

Jaehwan, you should know that if I wanted to dispose of a body, a tree branch grinder would be the obvious first choice.
If you can't handle cutting through chicken bone, you should think about getting a good filet knife and just debone the meat. For larger bones, as Minbo suggested, there are saws out there for bones. A good hacksaw, if you can't get a specialty saw, will do the trick. I would also suggest a guillotine paper cutter if you have one but that's getting a little drastic.
But if possible, learn to work with a cleaver. Here's a simple technique. Put the point of the blade on the cutting board. Bring the blade down so it's resting on the chicken bone. Keep one hand on the back of the blade and the other on the handle close to the blade so the bone is between your hand positions. Now bring your full weight onto the cleaver. Make sure the table or counter is low enough so you can get good leverage. This should work on any chicken bone and give you a clean cut.

[ZhuBaJie]

True, but all the dishes that I 've had, aside from the tiny little riblets, usually the meat has been separated from the bone and chopped up.

well, to be honest, most of the chicken dishes i was thinking of, these days people don't cook them at home anyway, stuff like 白切雞 (White Cut Chicken?), 海南雞飯 (Hainan Chicken), 炸子雞 (Crispy Chicken?), and 油雞 (Oil Chicken?). but i know that one of my favourite dishes to cook at home, 三杯雞 (Three Cup Chicken), is better if you cook the chicken with bone in. most of the time i just use deboned chicken nowadays because i got lazy.

[ZhuBaJie]

But if possible, learn to work with a cleaver. Here's a simple technique. Put the point of the blade on the cutting board. Bring the blade down so it's resting on the chicken bone. Keep one hand on the back of the blade and the other on the handle close to the blade so the bone is between your hand positions. Now bring your full weight onto the cleaver. Make sure the table or counter is low enough so you can get good leverage. This should work on any chicken bone and give you a clean cut.

does that work on bone? won't the chicken slip? i want to say i've tried this before and didn't work, but i can't remember 100%. i say just bring that cleaver up near your head and bring it down on the bone hard. that's how i do it. and make sure you sharpen that thing before you use it.

see, i don't understand. don't white people ever have to cut chicken bone? what do they use if not a big cleaver?

[jaehwan]

Jaehwan, you should know that if I wanted to dispose of a body, a tree branch grinder would be the obvious first choice.

Haha...I was thinking about how you would have to "fix" the body so that it fit on your motorcycle in order to transport it to the ol' wood chipper. :)

[minbo]

Hmm, cutting up the carcass of a chicken (except the backbone) for most of the cooked on bone dishes can be done with a good pair of poultry shears. Won't go through the leg bone either.

As for the other matter, in short two words.

Hog farm...

In long form:

Brick Top (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0285495/): You're always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together.
Sol (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0416694/): Would someone mind telling me, who are you?
Brick Top (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0285495/): And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it's no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig shit, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig".

In even more detailed form, lifting a post from another site...

Since you keep bring up the pig farm thing I thought about it a little more...

Well going on what we all learned from the move "Snatch". Let me review from memory:

1) Must shave all the body hair, bad for pigs digestion.

2) Remove teeth, very hard to digest.

3) Must have enough pig based on pounds of flesh, something like 1 pig per 16 pounds, can't remember.

Also from the movie you notice the planning, body bags and lots of plastic and tyvek suits with booties. You want to shave and butcher on location, thats where the plastic and body bags come in. Tubs of acid I would guess would be enough to destroy what would be left on the plastic and body bags but how much acid and what ratio. It would be easier I think to burn the plastic, body bags, and your one uses clothing. Not an ordinary fire but hotter. Easy way to create one is in one half of a 50 gal drum filled with small pieces of plastic and gas. Burn the items in small pieces to make sure there are no un-burned items. Pieces should float on top of gas almost, thats a good ratio to make sure you have enough fuel to destroy everything. Now stir until gas is uses up. Pour more gas in and repeat with new pieces of evidence. When your done with the 50 gal drum flatten and dispose of it or cut out the bottom and go camping and uses it as another one of those fire rings. If your lucky enough to take up the hobby of glass blowing or pottery you might already have access to a hot enough fire, if you built one on your property and used it correctly nobody would ask. Just make sure to clean and use again normally.

Now back to what the pigs left over after they did there best. You still would have to get rid of this soup/slop/crap. Most pig farmers have a lagoon for this but this is a holding area that will have that oh so hard to get rid of DNA. Need to turn the mix into fertilizer quickly, either dry it out and mulch it or liquefy it and spray it. This will make it very hard to get those DNA bits. If you can sell the fertilizer even better since you wouldn't want to just have it on your fields... If your planning on just having pigs for body disposal you should think about isolating the pigs in concrete rubber lined holding area. This way you will be able to pump out and really control what is disposed of. Filters in pumps and screens should be used to remove bone fragments. All solids should be crushed and burned then repeat the step again.

What would you do to improve it... OH yea DON'T leave the personal belongs of the victim in you house... (or post how to do it on someones LJ...)

http://krow.livejournal.com/189788.html

[kikiandlala]

Thanks all. I think I'm going with the bone saw idea. I just recently cut myself pretty good with a regular chef's knife, so the raising a cleaver and throwing all my bodyweight behind it - I'll have to pass on that.

One thing that surprised me was how frail-looking that bone saw looked. It looked scarcely adequate for taking down willow branches.